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wentietb Century 
* Classics * 



No. 12. 



August, 1900. 



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Richard Realf's 
f ree-$tate Poems 



Issued Monthly. 



Price, $1 per year. 




CRANE & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 

110*112 EAST EIGHTH AVENUE, TOPEKA, KAN. 



ENTERED AT THE TOPEKA POSTOFFICE AS SECOND-CLASS HATTER. 



THE 

Twentieth Century 
Classics. 



Issued monthly, under the editorial supervision of W. M. Davidson, 
Superintendent of Schools of the city of Topeka. 

The object is to furnish special reading of a high order for the use of 
high schools, teachers, and for select reading. 

The first year's work will be divided into three groups, and be given 
entirely to the following local series : 

History . . i. John Brown of Kansas. 

2. Jim Lane of Kansas. 

3. Eli Thayer and the Emigrant Aid Society. 

4. Territorial Governors of Kansas. 

Literature. 1. Kansas in Poetry and Song. 

2. Selections from Ironquill. 

3. Kansas in Literature. 

4. Kansas in History. 

Nature . . 1. Plants and Flowers of Kansas. 

Study 2. Birds of Kansas. 

Group. 3. Geography of Kansas. 

4. Minerals of Kansas. 

Subscription price will be $1.00 per year in advance, postage paid. Sin 
gle numbers, 10 .cents. Clubs of six will be entitled to one subscription 
free. 

We invite subscriptions. No expense will be spared by the editorial 
management or by the publishers to make this series of the highest 
standard. 



CRANE & COMPANY, PUBLISHERS, 
TOPEKA. 



THE TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 
AND SCHOOL READINGS 

UNDEB THE EDITORIAL SUPERVISION OF 

W. M. DAVIDSON 

SUPERINTENDENT OP THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF TOPEKA, KANSAS 



THE FREE- STATE 
AND OTHER KANSAS POEMS 

OF 

it 

RICHARD REALF, 
ETC. 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS AND SCHOOL READINGS 



RICHARD REALF'S 
FREE -STATE POEMS 



WITH PERSONAL LYRICS WRITTEN IN KANSAS 



EDITED, WITH HISTORICAL NOTES, BY 



COL. RICHARD J. HINTON, 

Author of "John Brown and his Men ; " "Army of the Border " ("Price Raid " ) ; 
''English Radical Leaders;" Editor and Biographer of Richard Realf, etc. 



Crane & Company, Publishers 

Topeka, Kansas 

1900 



64461 



"•wo Copies Received f 
OCT 22 1900 

Copyright entry 
(Dcjr. ZT, lCf 

SECOND COPY. 

Delivered to 



OftDtH DIVISION, 
25 1900 I 



NOV 



• *"* 



Copyrighted by 

Crane & Company, Topeka, Kansas 

1900 



HOW LONG, LORD, HOW LONG?* 



How long, Lord, how long 
Must fettered Freedom writhe beneath her chains, 
And send the wailing of the captive's song 

Across the purple plains? 

How long, O Lord, how long 

Shall Slavery's bloodhounds hold her by the throat, 
And her life reel beneath the dripping thong 
Of Hell's Iscariot? 

How long, Lord, how long 
Shall she be haunted, homeless, through the earth; 
Nor thou — Just One — against the crimson wrong 

Launch Thy broad lightnings forth? 

0, have Thine eyes not seen 
With what high trust she bore her bitter shames; 
Nor marked how calm and Godlike and serene 

She stood amid the flames? 

0, have Thine ears not heard 
Her long low gasp of inarticulate prayer, 
When livid hate, with redly reeking sword, 

Has clutched her by the hair? 

0, didst Thou not look down 
Upon her cruel buffetings of scorn, 
And watch her temples stream beneath the crown, 

Made of the mocking thorn? 

♦This striking poem was the first that Kichard Realf wrote on and in relation to 
Kansas. It was printed early in December, 1856. in the columns of the Herald of Free- 
dom, Lawrence, Kan., and can be found in the "Poems of Richard Realf," Funk & 
Wagnalls Company, New York, 1898, by whose permission it is published h«re. 

(5) 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

And dost Thou not discern 
How the fierce, pitiless rabble casteth lots 
For her white robes — alas! so rent and torn, 

And smeared with purple spots? 

O, when she held the cup 
On those wild nights of her Gethsemane; — 
Father in Heaven, did she still not look up, 

Firm and unmoved — to Thee? 

And when the bloody sweat 
Oozed from the blue veins of her shuddering limbs, 
Was not the burning clasp of agony met 

With calm triumphant hymns? 

0, if she be Thy child, 
And Thou art God, burst now this dread eclipse, 
And let her pass forth free and undefiled, 

With Thy breath on her lips. 



COLONEL RICHARD J. HINTON. 



The subject of this sketch is one of the few surviving 
Kansas pioneers. He was born in London, England, 'No- 
vember 26th, 1830. His early life was one of hardship — 
a struggle for bread. He was brought up to labor, learning 
the stone-cutter's trade. But he was ever brave and san- 
guine; discouraging circumstances proved his greatest 
blessing, for they developed in him those sturdy qualities 
for which the Briton is so world-famous. Small of size, 
he was full of energy and ambition ; while doing the sains 
work performed by much larger boys, his labor was but 
half done when the shop closed, for he spent many hours 
poring over his books. By his own efforts he secured a 
fair education. He was a profound student even in youth, 
and the labor he did only developed the qualities of mind 
and heart which made him ponder deeply the condition 
of those who struggled for their daily bread. Political, 
social and economic questions were his favorite studies. 
He became a republican, and believed the citizen should 
be accorded what nature had given him, — the fullest lib- 
erty consistent with stable government, and that special 
privileges should be enjoyed by none. It was plain to 
him that the sources of all power in government are in 
the people. Being of this faith, he came to regard Amer- 
ica as the most congenial country for him, and he deter- 

(7) 



8 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



mined to make it his home. He saw in this land of freedom 
broader opportunities, and he turned to it as so many others 
of his countrymen and our kindred have done. He had in 
him that spirit of adventure and that daring and contempt 
for danger and hardship which have given so much of the 
habitable globe to the Anglo-Saxons. It was of no con- 
cern that he left his native land with little more than 
would carry him to the hospitable shores of the new Eng- 
land, founded by his race beyond the Atlantic. He was 
sure to find useful and honorable work to do, and he 
knew that duty nobly done would gain him recognition 
and friends. 

This adventurous young man landed in New York in 
June, 1851, — before he had attained his majority. It 
was his intention to get a more liberal education. He 
learned the printer's trade, and while supporting himself 
by laboring in this occupation he studied medicine and 
also graduated in the profession of topographical engin- 
eering. Besides, he mastered the art of shorthand writing, 
a study of which he had begun in England, and was em- 
ployed as a reporter by different newspapers in New York 
and Boston. The Fugitive Slave Law was then being put 
into effective force, and the brutalities of it engaged his 
sympathetic nature and aroused his sense of justice. It 
was impossible for one with his conceptions of the rights 
of man to remain aloof and neutral in such a conflict as 
was then raging in the United States. He espoused the 
cause of the oppressed, and was soon numbered as one of 
the champions of freedom. He made the acquaintance of 
the leaders of this cause, and became an anti-slavery advo- 



COLONEL RICHARD J. HINTON V 

cate. ]\Ir. Hinton was among the first to recognize the 
need of the immediate organization of a national party to 
oppose the aggressions of the slave power, and he assisted 
in the formation of the Republican party. He did valiant 
work for the election of his friend Fremont, whose phe- 
nomenal popularity, together with the enthusiasm with 
which the young party he represented was received, so 
nearly made him President of the United States in the 
first election after the formal organization of the Republi- 
can party. The interest aroused throughout the country 
in the affairs of Kansas attracted Mr. Hinton, and early 
in 1856 he determined to cast his lot with the struggling 
patriots of the Territory. This resolution was due most 
largely to the conviction that the issue of freedom for 
Kansas meant that of emancipation also for the slave 
States. 

Young Hinton set out for Kansas in June. He has 
filed his journal of this journey in the library of the 
Kansas State Historical Society, and it proves a valuable 
contribution to Kansas history. Under date of June 24 
he says: " Shall see ~Ne\v York in the morning, and then 
westward for Kansas. . . . Kansas is the word, and 
the overruling Father of Love alone knows what will be 
my fate there. One thing I do know, and that is I shall 
not shrink from my duty, be it what it may.' 7 Right 
bravely and nobly said! And to his honor it can be af- 
firmed that he lived up to this high resolution. He came 
to fight with sword or pen, or both, as circumstances 
might demand. On the road his company learned of the 
capture of a number of Free-State emigrants that had 



10 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



preceded them — learned that the border ruffians had cap- 
tured, disarmed, and turned back the party as it was 
passing up the Missouri river. He reflected upon this 
circumstance, and the conclusion arrived at is recorded 
for us in his journal, as follows : " I trust that if it 
should be our fate to encounter a body of these scoun- 
drels [the border ruffians], we may prove true to New 
England and liberty. I shall not be willing to give up 
my arms without a struggle, and trust 

'That I may not fall defeated, 

Sore with wounds or faint with heat, 

Ere one haughty foe lies trampled 
And disarmed beneath my feet.' " 

. The journey to the West was a continual revelation to 
him. The vast resources and extent of the country stirred 
his enthusiasm and fortified his resolution to do and dare 
for liberty. He says : " Every facility seems here to have 
been heaped by the Father's hand, that a free nation would 
require to make it great and glorious. Magnificent lakes, 
grand navigable rivers, broad fertile fields, valleys and 
prairies, with wild forests, mountains, cataracts and tor- 
rents, all combine to make its soil a paradise and the fit 
home of a happy people. All this is to be put in peril to 
satisfy the wild ambition of a few men who, living under 
a bane, want to extend its blight and mildew all over the 
broad expanse of Western lands. God forbid that this 
should be;«and if strong arms, brave hearts and noble 
principles will conquer, the votaries of freedom must 
triumph." 

The route selected for the company with which Hinton 
came led from New York to Buffalo; from Buffalo the 



COLOXEL RICHARD J. HIXTOX H 

company went by steamer to Detroit ; thence by rail 
to Chicago and Iowa City, the latter then the western- 
most point reached by railroad; thence by wagon-train to 
Nebraska. The journal mentioned before relates in detail 
the many incidents of the journey. We have not space to 
enumerate them in this brief sketch. We shall give the 
entry describing the entrance of this company into the 
promised land. It was consolidated with many other com- 
panies of patriotic pilgrims, all of whom made up that 
body of freedom-loving people who carried such consterna- 
tion to the ruffian hordes, and who were known as " Lane's 
Army of the Xorth." They crossed the north line of 
Kansas Territory on the day made glorious in our annals 
by their entrance, — August 7th, 1856. Of this event, so 
full of import to Kansas and the Free-State cause, Hin- 
ton wrote : 

"Kansas Territory, Poxy Creek, 
(4 miles from the boundary,) 
Thursday, August 7, 1856. 
" Walking across the prairies, the appearance of our 
train was remarkable. Extending from one end to the 
other, the distance was probably not less than three-quarters 
of a mile. If a person could have stood on some hilltop in 
the distance and watched our passage, he would have sup- 
posed us to have been at least a thousand strong. What 
a mighty movement did this seem to me, when viewing 
our route and calling to mind the primary cause of our 
being here! Xever in the annals of the world has such 
a sight as greets my eyes been seen by the world. Over 
the ruffled ocean of human progression, when the long- 
drawn shadows of the Future shall be fainter and the path- 
way open, our movement will glisten and glow a living 
beacon to guide, direct and teach a glorious truth and a 



12 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



grand example of heroism to those struggling mariners 
who, in the storm-tossed bark, may be seeking the haven 
of Freedom. 

" In the train now moving, there are fifty-three wagons 
with teams of oxen or horses, some twenty-five horsemen, 
and over five hundred other persons, on foot. . . . 
This morning we started at about 7, and at about 10 
crossed the Kansas line. For the first time I stood upon 
her soil, and after six weeks of toil and fatigue have 
reached the promised land. My heart is too full to find 
words to express my thoughts, and it seems hard to realize 
that we are on the prairies destined by the slave oligarchy 
to be blackened by the hell of men in bondage. But the 
good God, who provides for all, in His infinite Providence 
will not let this evil 'fall upon us and overcome us like 
a summer cloud.' The fair prospects of Humanity must 
not be blotted, nor the hope of the world blasted." 

The company in which Hinton came determined to 
found a town on the direct road for emigrants, under the 
name of Lexington, and this delusive enterprise detained 
him for some time. The record he has left of it is quite 
interesting, and is as follows: 

"Saturday, August 9, 1856. — Yesterday, our party, 
consisting of twenty-eight men ; the Fremont Independent 
Company, of twenty-one persons, under the direction of 
H. S. Dean; the Moline Company, nine members, under 
J. P. Wheeler, — in all fifty-seven persons, — formed a city 
association to organize and raise the City of Lexington, 
Worcester county, Kansas Territory. The government 
of the association is vested in a President, one Vice-Presi- 
dent, Treasurer, Secretary, and five Councilmen. Held a 
meeting and elected as President, Martin Stowell, formerly 
of Worcester, Mass. ; Vice-President, H. S. Dean, same 
place; Secretary, T. L. Merritt, from St Lawrence 



COLOKEL EICHAED J. HINTO^ 



13 



county, New York; Treasurer, J. P. Wheeler, from Wor- 
cester county, Mass. ; first Councilman, J. O. B. Dunning, 
of Texas ; second councilman, M. C. Brewster, Montrose, 
Susquehanna county, Pennsylvania ; third Councilman, 
Frank D. Drake, of Maine ; fourth Councilman, Asa 
Jaquith, Fitchburg, Mass. ; fifth Councilman, O. F. Rob- 
inson, Levi Station, Kane county, Illinois. After electing 
officers, the city was named. Quite an exciting vote was 
taken on that subject, one side wanting it Worcester, the 
others Lexington. Lexington carried the day. We shall 
now have a city of that glorious old title, that will not dis- 
grace, as its Missouri neighbor has done, the hallowed asso- 
ciations that cluster in beauty around it. From our Lex- 
ington shall go forth, we hope, brave deeds and pure pa- 
triotism, such as made the days of '7G full of living light 
and glorious hopes, and reared a goal for all the world to 
march to. From the plains of Kansas shall ring out 
a brave tune for Humanity to march, whose music shall 
fill the soldiers of Progress with martial ardor, and in 
clarion tones sound the name and glory of Freedom all 
over the world." 

He seems to have been impatient to proceed, for he re- 
cords, " I must go, for where the work is doing, there must 
I be." Before this he had written : " Our company work 
progresses very slowly. The house is about six logs high 
and the well about twenty feet deep. Xo one seems to 
have any energy, or to care whether it is done or not. For 
myself, I am fast losing what interest I ever had in it." 

On Sunday, August 31, 1856, Hinton arrived at Law- 
rence, "very tired and weary, but fortunately for my 
comfort I met a friend, Henry Sullivan, from New York, 
who insisted upon my sharing his lodgings for a week." 
He was not idle a day after his arrival, but plunged at 



1^ TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

once into the business of writing to Eastern papers upon 
Kansas affairs. His journal shows that he gathered a vast 
fund of information immediately, and that he had even 
then a remarkably clear and correct comprehension of the 
conditions existing in the Territory. He wrote for many 
papers during the stirring times which followed; among 
them, the Boston Traveller, of which he was the regular 
correspondent; the Tribune, Times, and Herald, of New 
York; the Worcester Spy, Concord Monitor, Cleveland 
Leader, Chicago Tribune, Missouri Democrat, Anti-Slav- 
ery Standard, and Boston Commonwealth. He also helped 
to establish papers in Kansas. In this field of journalism 
he spent, mainly, the time to the beginning of the Civil 
War. He was always the friend of the Free-State cause, 
and of the struggling patriots who were striving against 
such enormous odds and difficulties to make that issue 
triumphant. He was clear-headed, and the subterfuges in- 
troduced by the Administration for the purpose of de- 
ception never once obscured his vision. He seems to have 
disliked Lane at first; but after witnessing the tireless 
energy with which he served the cause of freedom, Hinton 
became his friend and supporter. He was also charmed 
with the courage and disinterestedness of John Brown. 
Here was a man striking at the root of the evil. To do 
this he was sacrificing his time, strength, means. He put 
his life in the balance, and counted it as dross; and he 
gave his sons as freely as he offered his own life. He 
expected and wished no fee, reward, or recompense be- 
yond the approval of his conscience. Such heroic devo- 
tion to the principles of liberty and Christianity aroused 



COLONEL RICHARD J. HINTON 15 

the admiration of the younger advocate in the same field. 
He saw in John Brown one of those men so rare in the 
history of the world, — one who cast everything away but 
that which he could use for the benefit of humanity. This 
example of lofty and unselfish patriotism found a response 
in the heart of the young man who had crossed the Atlantic 
to enjoy the liberal institutions established here in Amer- 
ica by the later generations of his race. It acted upon him 
as a powerful stimulant to exertion and emulation, and the 
inspiration has remained with him all through life. John 
Brown invited him to go to Harper's Ferry, and business 
engagements previously entered into are perhaps the only 
causes which prevented his having been in the army of the 
"first invasion," whose ranks he made at the time of attack 
a persistent and dangerous effort to reach. The majority 
of those who did go were the associates and intimate 
friends of Hinton, — and a man was hung for him by the 
Virginians ! 

After the Civil War began, Hinton, early in 1862, 
was appointed and mustered First Lieutenant, (Adjutant,) 
to recruit and command colored soldiers, being the first so 
appointed in the United States. He served in the Union 
Army three years and four months. When he was mus- 
tered out, in November, 1865, he bore the rank of Brevet 
Colonel, and was acting Inspector-General of the Freed- 
men's Bureau. In the early months of the struggle for 
the Union he was sent South from Washington on impor- 
tant secret-service work, for doing which he received the 
personal thanks of President Lincoln. 

After the close of the war Colonel Hinton remained in 



16 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



Washington for some years in his old profession as cor- 
respondent. Later, he went on extensive travels in Europe, 
Asia, and Africa. He has been a very active contributor 
to the current magazines and other publications of his time. 
He has edited with ability the Boston Daily News, San 
Francisco Evening Post, and Washington Sunday Gazelle. 
In Kansas he has been an editorial or special writer on the 
Register, Times, Conservative, and Bulletin, in Leaven- 
worth ; on the Kanzas News, and Atchison Champion. In 
all these varied labors of workman, writer, and soldier, he 
has remained a student. He has read law extensively, and 
has been admitted to the bar. 

In addition to his labors as a journalist, he has written 
extensively and well in other fields. In 1858 he wrote with 
James Redpath a Guide-Book to Kansas and Pike's Peak. 
In 1860 he wrote and published the " Lives" of William 
II. Seward and Abraham Lincoln. In 1866 he brought 
out his " The Army of the Border," a history of the Price 
Paid of 1864. In 1874 he published, in a series of brief 
biographies, " English Radical Leaders." While in San 
Francisco he prepared and published (in 1879) a Hand- 
book of Arizona. In collaboration with Colonel Frank A. 
Burr, he has written a Life of General Philip Henry Sheri- 
dan. And though so occupied in these fields, he found 
time to contribute to monthly periodicals extensive and 
exhaustive articles on literary, historical, economic, and 
scientific subjects. Some of the magazines to which he 
contributed are as follows: Continental, Atlantic, Scrib- 
ners (old style), Galaxy, Kansas Magazine, North Ameri- 
can, Forum, National Review, Frank Leslie's Monthly, 



COLONEL KICHAKD J. HINTON 17 

and The Chautauquan. In his list we must include The 
Victoria Magazine, Westminster, and others, both of Eng- 
lish and French periodicals. 

The greatest work written bj Colonel Hinton is John 
Brown and His Men. This he published in 1894, and it is 
in many respects the leading biography of the men who 
went to Harper's Ferry. Xo other writer had so intimate 
an acquaintance with Brown's men as did Colonel Hinton. 
In no other work can so complete an account of their lives 
and achievements be found. 

Another charming and valuable work for which we 
are indebted to Colonel Hinton is the Poems of Richard 
Realf. This was published in 1898. Realf was one of 
the real poets. He gave several years of his life to the 
cause of liberty in Kansas. His talents were great. The 
inspiration he obtained in Kansas made him sublime. 
His pages burn with fervent patriotism. His heart bled 
for Kansas and her wrongs. Here he added to his genius 
the title of the friend of humanity. He wrote much, but 
made no effort to preserve his writings. For many years 
Colonel Hinton sought them out with great diligence, and 
the result of his labors is the charming volume mentioned. 
It is a contribution to the literature of Kansas. The in- 
domitable and unconquerable spirit of our fathers breathes 
through the glowing lines of the brilliant writer. This vol- 
ume of the Classics preserves additional lyrics written by 
Realf for Kansas, her sufferings and noble deeds. The 
biography of the poet by Colonel Hinton will long remain 
an addition to literature and a tribute to genius, tender 
and faithful. 

2— 



18 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



Colonel Hinton has held many official positions. Among 
them we mention the following: 

Eeporter Constitutional Convention, 1858, Leaven- 
worth. Reporter Court of Impeachment, Kansas, 1862. 
Lieutenant, Adjutant, Captain, and brevet Lieutenant- 
Colonel (volunteers) Union Army. Commissioner of Emi- 
gration in Europe, 1867. Inspector United States Con- 
sulates in Europe. Special Agent of President Grant to 
Vienna, 1873. Special Agent Treasury and State Depart- 
ments on the Frontier and in Mexico, 1883. Irrigation 
Engineer United States Geological Survey, 1889-90. 
Special Agent in Charge Department of Agriculture, 
April, 1890, to May, 1892, of the United States Artesian 
and Underflow Investigation, and of the Irrigation In- 
quiry. In these latter capacities he has written nine vol- 
umes of Reports, all extensive and large; these reports 
are accepted as the highest authority in the work they 
cover. In addition to these, he made a Report to the 
United States in 1869, on the " Decline of American Ton- 
nage." Other Reports by him are as follows : On Labor 
Questions, in 1871-72, and in 1884-85; on Agriculture 
in Mexico, 1883; on the Commerce of the Mediterranean, 
1873-74; on Reciprocity, in Mexico, 1883. 

Colonel Hinton has been elected an honorary member 
of various scientific and other societies in Europe and 
America. 

Colonel Hinton has been a devoted friend of Kansas 
for more than forty years. He came here young and full 
of enthusiasm. He was from the first a graphic writer, 
and was indignant at the treatment, outrageous and dia- 



COLONEL KICHAKD J. HINTON 19 

bolical, inflicted upon Kansas and her people by the border 
ruffians, and at the injustice heaped upon her people by 
the Government of the United States. His letters were 
among the best and most reliable sent from the Territory. 
They were not overdrawn, but were full, clear, incisive, 
always coming to the vital point at once. They were the 
result of deep conviction ; their strength lay in their ear- 
nest sincerity. He was quick to discern between real and 
sham patriots, and was not slow to criticize derelictions 
of duty. This earned him the ill-will of some of the Terri- 
torial editors, but no higher nor better proof of his sincerity 
could exist than this enmity. He served through the Civil 
War in Kansas regiments. Since then he has stood for 
Kansas in newspaper, book, and magazine. The memory 
of her noble sons has been his chief concern, and manfully 
and ably has he defended them from the vile assaults of 
the sham-patriot and the defamer. He has fought our 
battles, written our history, enriched our literature. He 
has earned our gratitude, and he deserves well at our hands. 
He has been entirely unselfish in his labors, and we have 
never given him the credit he earned. In a conversation 
with the late Judge Franklin G. Adams, Secretary of the 
Kansas State Historical Society, D. W. Wilder said : 

" Hinton was a thoroughly good man. He has done 
good literary work for Kansas. 

" In 1861 I published a little thing in the Leavenworth 
Conservative about Hinton. The next day he came to me 
with tears in his eyes and said, 'That is the first kind thing 
a Kansas paper has said about me.' You know he was of 
English birth, and dropped his 'h's/ and the boys all made 



20 



TWENTIETH CENTUEY CLASSICS 



sport of him. He has shown through the war, in the or- 
ganization of the gallant troops and companies, that he 
was a man of really genuine manhood. " 

Colonel Hinton has two sons, both identified with West- 
ern interests and associations. The eldest has been editor 
and writer in California, Idaho, and Utah. He is. now 
manager of the famous Sousa Band. The youngest lives, 
on account of his health, in the Southwest, and is well 
known as a brilliant young writer in El Paso and New 
Mexico. He is now on the editorial staff of the New 
Mexico Republican, at Santa Fe. 

The earnest love of Colonel Hinton for Kansas and his 
deep solicitation for the memory of his co-laborers in the 
struggle to make Kansas free, are perhaps most clearly 
seen in the notable address, "On the Nationalization of 
Freedom," which he delivered in January, 1900, before 
the Kansas State Historical Society at its annual meeting. 
In that scholarly speech he eloquently sets forth the place 
that Kansas holds in the nation's great struggle, framing 
its story in the massive outlines he gives of the long and 
most severe struggle for an equilibrium of votes and power 
in the United States Senate, definitely beginning in 1814 
and continuing down until chattelism received a final blow 
in the culmination of freedom for Kansas in 1860-61. 
He skillfully groups this struggle around the persons of 
John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, and Thomas Hart 
Benton, of Missouri. The sincere, even pathetic interest 
Colonel Hinton continues to maintain in Kansas and its 
historical well-doing, is illustrated by a sonnet which is 



COLONEL RICHARD J. HINTON 21 

embodied in the address referred to, and which is given 
here : 

"As the dust-drawn valves of memory dim 
Swing slowly unto the rhythm of that hymn 
Which time is chanting now, I see the dawn 
That, when Freedom's low notes were piping slim, 
With all the future still in doubtful pawn, 
Made rugged men but gird 'their loins more grim, 
Until through the night's gray shades so forlorn 
We heard the breathing of the growing corn. 

"I see the fields so fair that toil hath won; 
I hear glad voices that grow with western sun; 
I know the wilderness in blood made quick, 
And roads that human feet are thronging thick; 
So here I feel the youthful service sweet, 
And learn such gifts their rip'ning fruits shall greet." 

WILLIAM ELSEY CONNELLEY. 
Topeka, Kansas, August 27, 1900. 



RICHARD REALF'S FREE-STATE POEMS, 



BY WAY OF PBOLOGUE. 



Richard Realf came to Kansas from ISTew York city 
in the fall of 1856, and remained in the Territory until 
the latter part of October, 1857. His direct connection 
with the Free-State struggle lasted about thirteen months. 
The tribute he paid to its spirit and purpose, as shown in 
the pages which follow, will last as long as men learn of 
history and love true poesy. 

He came to that strife from a position which was dig- 
nified and honored by constant service to the struggling 
and socially burdened. He was Assistant Superintendent 
under its founder, the Rev. Mr. Pease, of the famous 
Five Points House of Industry. The young poet was 
already well and favorably known in New York for his 
genius both as poet and public speaker. His poems had 
appeared in the Daily Tribune and the Mirror, a literary 
weekly of merit, edited by Col. Hiram Fuller, who re- 
mained till death the poet's admirer and friend. 

Realf was at the date of leaving ISTew York for Kansas, 
early in September, 1856, in his twenty-fourth year, a 
refined picture of manly and intellectual beauty, slender 
of frame and small of stature, but strong and healthy, full 
of courage and energy. He came to the Territory on his 

(23) 



24 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



own initiative and cost, joining a train of Northern emi- 
grants in eastern Iowa for protection and companionship. 
His place was not that of an "adventurer," as the sciolists 
who, in these latter days of gain and greed, sneer at all 
sacrifice, might suggest, however adventurous in spirit 
was the mood that prompted. He became a favorite at 
once with men of the world's work and endeavor, — men 
who knew the dangerous work before them — like Shaler 
W. Eldridge, Samuel C. Pomeroy, Samuel F. Tappan, Ed- 
ward Daniels, and others in charge of the emigrant train, 
and by them was treated as an equal and placed on duty 
and in trust. It is easy enough nowadays for the smug 
"scholars" who think by announcing themselves as writing 
"conservatively" even in advance of examination, that they 
are winning reputation as "honest" critics, to sneer at that 
remarkable series of national events and policies which in 
the summer and fall of 1856 rescued to Freedom a starved, 
suffering and cultured band of free people in the region 
now held to loyal service by one of the greatest of the 
younger American commonwealths. It was not a joke, 
a crime, a propaganda, or a careless, ruffianly, filibustering 
movement which sent nearly two thousand sturdy men of 
the North across Iowa and southern Nebraska, to and 
through northern Kansas, to secure the peace and safety 
of the Free-State towns and people in the Kansas valley 
and south thereof. The armed emigrants who came were 
of the best material. They were of the type that five years 
later made the continent tremble with their marching feet, 
as they sang the "Hallelujah" chorus or told our beloved 
Lincoln that 



RICHARD REALF 25 

"We are coming, Father Abraham, 
Three hundred thousand more/' 

for the same cause that sent Eichard Eealf, poet and 
orator, workman and soldier, the present writer (who holds 
among his manliest life-acts the fact that he was the first 
man in that marching column of Northern freemen to 
cross the Kansas line in 185G), and hundreds of others 
quite as worthy, to the rescue of the people and the cause 
of which Kichard Eealf s poems herein gathered as writ- 
ten in that year of memorable activity so powerfully, 
rhythmically and fitly sing. 

Eichard Eealf was by birth an Englishman. He be- 
longed, however, to the broader human brood who are 
always and truly American, because always defenders of 
Freedom and supporters of equality by law, and in all 
civic opportunities. His life was a sad one, — largely the 
consequence of the conditions from which he came. His 
death was sadder still. In Kansas he always served with 
a lofty zeal, and giving of his best with an ungrudging 
hand. In his later four years of notable soldier service 
he won high recognition, and fully deserved it all. His 
"failures" are buried in his lonely grave that overlooks 
the "Golden Gate' '-way of the Pacific coast. However 
pitiful his errors, we know that he served well and sang 
loyally. The world will long profit from his inspiration, 
and men and women be bettered by his music. This may 
not serve the wit or casuistry of those who prefer to re- 
habilitate Calhoun and degrade John Brown, or would 
rather exalt Quantrill, if they can thereby spatter the 
name of Lane. The pen that finds relief in describing 



26 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



th€ scarred remains of murdered Free-State "adven- 
turers" as "abolition wolf-meat,"* even if it be only in 
irreverent jesting, will find little to praise in the fervid 
passion and lofty ardor wherewith the Poet Laureate of 
the Free-State cause sang the deeds of the dying in heroic 
numbers. Bealf himself, facing in the purpling shadow 
of death the verities which dwell at and to the last in 
the human soul, has himself answered them all: 

"If he missed 
World's honors and world's plaudits, and the wage 

Of the world's deft lacqueys, still his lips were kissed 
Daily by those high angels who assuage 

The thirstings of the poets. . . ." 

"So he died rich. And if his eyes were blurred 

With big films — silence! he is in his grave. 
Greatly he suffered ; greatly, too, he erred ; 

Yet" broke his heart in trying to be brave. 
Nor did he wait till Freedom had become 

The popular shibboleth of courtiers' lips. 
He smote for her when God himself seemed dumb 

And all his arching skies were in eclipse. 
He was aweary, but he fought his fight, 

And stood for simple manhood; and was joyed 
At the august broadening of the light 

And new earth's heaving heavenward from the void. 
He loved his fellows, and their love was sweet — 

Plant daisies at his head, and at his feet." 

Biography would have been out of place here, — for the 
poet's Kansas life was but episodical, — and his work is all 
that seemed necessary to gather for these pages. But I 
was precluded therefrom, however, by the fact that as 
Bichard Bealf s literary executor I have already gathered 
the main body of his poems, and told his life-story as 

♦Spring. 



RICHARD REALF 



27 



simply and kindly as I might, in a recent volume. (Poems 
by Kichard Realf — Poet, Soldier, Workman. With a 
memoir by Richard J. Hinton. Punk & Wagnalls Com- 
pany, !N"ew York and London, 1898.) Most — not all — 
of the poems in this little book differ more or less from the 
copies found in the larger volume. Some of them are 
new, and a few have not before been published. They 
number all I know of as having been written in or as a part 
of his Kansas experiences. The notes I have made are 
given simply in historical explanation of the events to 
which the poems whereto they are attached, relate. I am 
indebted, as are the readers of this monograph also, for the 
generous courtesy with which the Funk & Wagnalls Com- 
pany have allowed myself and the present publishers to so 
freely use the copyright material of their volume. 

RICHARD J. HIXTON. 
Topeka, Kansas, March 30, 1900. 



FREE-STATE LYRICS. 



FKEE-STATE LYEICS— ]S T o. I. 



THE DEFENSE OF LAWKENCE. 



All night upon the guarded hill, 

Until the stars were low, 
Wrapped round as with Jehovah's will 

We waited for the foe; 
All night the silent sentinels 

Moved by like gliding ghosts; 
All night the fancied warning bells 

Held all men to their posts. 

We heard the sleeping prairies' breath, 

The forest's human moans, 
The hungry gnashing of the teeth 

Of wolves on bleaching bones; 
We marked the roar of rushing fires, 

The neigh of frightened steeds, 
The voices as of far-off lyres 

Among the river reeds. 

We were but thirty-nine who lay 

Beside our rifles then; 
We were but thirty-nine, and they 

Were twenty hundred men. 
(31) 



32 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Our lean limbs shook and reeled about, 
Our feet were gashed and bare, 

And all the breezes shredded out 
Our garments in the air. 

Sick, sick of all the woes which spring 

Where falls the Southron's rod, 
Our very souls had learned to cling 

To freedom as to God; 
And so we never thought of fear 

In all those stormy hours, 
For every mother's son stood near 

The awful, unseen powers. 

And twenty hundred men had met 

And swore an oath of hell, 
That ere the morrow's sun might set, 

Our smoking homes should tell 
A tale of ruin and of wrath, 

And damning hate in store, 
To bar the freeman's western path 

Against him evermore. 

They came: the blessed Sabbath day, 

That soothed our swollen veins, 
Like God's sweet benediction, lay 

On all the singing plains; 
The valleys shouted to the sun, 

The great woods clapped their hands, 
And joy and glory seemed to run 

Like rivers through the lands. 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 

And then our daughters and our wives, 

And men whose heads were white. 
Rose sudden into kingly lives 

And walked forth to the fight; 
And we drew aim along our guns 

And calmed our quick ning breath, 
Then, as is meet for Freedom's sons, 

Shook loving hands with Death. 

And when three hundred of the foe 

Rode up in scorn and pride, 
Whoso had watched us then might know 

That God was on our side, 
For all at once a mighty thrill 

Of grandeur through us swept. 
And strong and swiftly down the hill 

Like Gideons we leapt. 

And all throughout that Sabbath day 

A wall of fire we stood, 
And held the baffled foe at bay, 

And streaked the ground with blood. 
And when the sun was very low 

They Avheeled their stricken flanks, 
And passed on wearily and slow 

Beyond the river banks. 



Beneath the everlasting stars 

We bended childlike knees, 

And thanked God for the shining scars 

Of his 
-3 



33 



34 TWENTIETH CENTUEY CLASSICS 

And some, who lingered, said they heard 

Such wond'rous music pass 
As though a seraph's voice had stirred 

The pulses of the grass. 

[By permission of Funk & Wagnalls Co., New York City. Richard Realf's Poems 
and Biography, Richard J. Hinton, editor and author, 1898.] 



NOTE TO FREE-STATE LYRIC No. I. 

This poem, originally published in the Lawrence Republican, 1857, 
which has always attracted wide attention and approval for its 
rhythmical quality and imaginative fervor, has also been the cause 
of some criticism as to historical accuracy. In Lawrence it has by 
some persons been considered as a misstatement of the position 
of a portion of the Free-State defenders, and by others as an effort 
to exalt the horn of John Brown. Certainly, the poet had neither 
of these ideas in mind; and as to John Brown, Realf, at the time 
this poem was written, had no personal knowledge of the old h&ro, 
and only regarded him from the public standpoint all Free-State 
people held in Kansas at that time, — as the most heroic and un- 
flinching personality within the Territorial limits and on our side. 
The poem represents, and impersonally only, the impression my 
narrative of the town defense on the 14th of September, 1856, 
made on his superb imagination. 

Realf reached Lawrence about the 20th of October, 1856, with 
Edward Daniels, Oscar La Grange, (both distinguished since for 
military service during the Civil War; the latter especially being- 
known as commander of the Michigan Cavalry Regiment which had 
a principal part in the capture of Jefferson Davis in 1865,) Samuel 
F. Tappan, and others of the emigrant command under Col. S. W. 
Eldridge, which Governor Geary caused to be arrested, and robbed, 
too, of its arms, etc., at Pony Creek, Nebraska, on the 10th of 
that month. I was the only old acquaintance or friend of Realf's 
in the town. We at once re-fraternized, and for some time occupied 
the same lodgings. On the second night after arrival, Realf, Tappan, 
Oscar La Grange, Joseph Spencer, and myself, took blankets and 
went up to Mount Oread, to pass the night within the stone-walled 
work that had been erected there to cover the old California road, 
and that which led to Lecompton, on the north side of the hill, and 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 35 

by the Unitarian church, where Mr. Nute preached. Of course, 
we young men talked of the exciting events of the month preceding, 
and as I was the only one of our party who had participated therein, 
I naturally described the incidents as I saw them. Recalling dis- 
tinctly the circumstances and the mood of narration, I know that 
no misrepresentation was made, nor was any personal exaltation 
designed, beyond what the facts conveyed to one active participant 
and trained observer. In pages 46 to 53 of "John Brown and His 
Men," (Funk & Wagnalls Co., New York, 1894,) will be found a 
somewhat detailed account of the events of September 14, 1856, 
taken mainly from my letter to the Boston Traveller, written on the 
night after their occurrence. There seems to have been during the 
past quarter of a century some influence at work in Kansas, which 
has brought about a disposition to substitute for the eye-witness 
the deductions of the professional historian and aftermath student, 
when they have not preferred to accept the unqualified assumptions 
and assertions of old Pro-Slavery and bushwhacking enemies. But 
the Poet is in no sense responsible. His work must be primarily 
judged for its lyrical quality, and its embodiment, too, of a heroic 
temper, that it has been easy to smite down or sneer at, in days 
made fat and limp by such service as " The Defense of Lawrence'' 
so musically embodies. 



FREE-STATE LYKICS— No. II. 



[Addressed to the Free-State men who contemplate voting for delegates to the Con- 
vention instituted by the Lecompton Legislature.] 

Ho ! Pilgrim sons of Pilgrim sires, 

Who, touched with manhood's newer hopes, 
Have built your sacred altar-fires 

Upon our Western prairie slopes; — 
Is it true, that, yielding at the last, 

The stormful hour that draweth nigh 
Shall find your votes and voices cast 

For this accurst, usurping lie? 

Remember ye the grand replies 

Of earlier Israel's prophet youths — 
Who, calm as are the upper skies, 

Clasped hands with Heaven's diviner truths ; 
And, when the fiery furnace flames 

Coiled round them, as serenely trod 
As though a-breathing Angel-names, 

They walked amid the thrones of God ? 

O Brothers ! when the Ruffian's torch 
Blazed all along your thrifty vales, 

And when you felt your fierce blood scorch 
At trampled woman's shuddering tales, 
(36) 



FKEE-STATE LYRICS 

Ye held no parley with the sin — 
Ye knew no coward shrinking then; 

But, thrilling to the voice within, 
Ye rose up — strong, heroic men ! 

And now — aye ! now the damning words 

That smite us reeling to our knees, 
And hedge our path about with swords, 

Have passed into "legalities" — 
Will ye forsake the blessed cause? 

Repress your hot, indignant breath, 
And, cringing to these Godless "laws," 

Slink, rotting, down to Hell and Death? 

No! by the life that Shombre gave, 

By all our fields of pain and woe; 
By Keyser's blood and Barber's grave, 

And our deep heart of Manhood — no ! 
No! though along our streaming veins 

The dripping blades shall reek and hiss 
No ! and wild scorn to him who reins 

His soul back from the precipice. 



37 



NOTE TO FREE-STATE LYRIC No. II. 

The nine poems that are designated as " Free-State Lyrics" were, 
for their historical and political significance, published by the present 
writer during the summer and early fall of 1857, in the Kanzas 
News, a weekly paper published at Emporia, then newly laid out, 
by Preston B. Plumb, since that day one of the most honored citi- 
zens of the State he helped to make free, and of which for years he 
was its United States Senator. Mr. Plumb and myself were for 
several months joint editors of the News. The founding of Emporia 
involves a bit of history, heretofore unwritten, which relates to a 



38 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

struggle within Free-State ranks that almost threatened a disrup- 
tion. 

I was an employe of George W. Brown, on the Herald of Freedom, 
during the winter and part of the spring of 1856-7, setting type, 
writing editorials, and doing clerical work or any work that was 
needed, even to tending a relative of Brown's taken with the small- 
pox, when that person left to John E. Cook and myself the humane 
duty he so carefully avoided. But that 's aside, however. When the 
Emporia project was started, the weekly newspaper proposed was 
designed to not only boom the new town, but the " Free-State 
Democratic party," which the Brown-Geary, et al., combination had 
in view. Singularly enough, the would-be organizers had the idea 
of making me their tool as editor, because I had no means to buy 
the needed material and was in want of steady employment. Plumb 
was foreman, then, of the Herald office, and my friend and confidant 
at the time. He had some means, and so it was brought about 
that he became Secretary of the Town Company and personal owner 
of the Kansas Neios. The result was the publication by him, and 
the editorship, as stated before, of the most radical Free-State 
paper in the Territory. It is not too much to claim, also, that it 
became, for some months at least, the boldest and ablest of our 
press. Among its constant writers for several months, besides the 
editors, were such pens as those of William A. Phillips, Martin F. 
Conway, James Redpath, John Henri Kagi, and Richard Realf. 

The poems given here as from the Kansas News were all written 
at first hand for that paper. Four of them appeared also in the 
Lawrence Republican, which T. Dwight Thacher and Norman Allen 
edited. No. V was published therein on the 28ih day of May; 
No. IV on the 18th day of June; No. I on the 13th day of August; 
and No. IX on the 20th thereof. The Republican had the distinc- 
tion, also, of first publishing other more exquisite Kansas poems 
by Realf, not historic or political, — all of which are included in 
this monograph in their original form. 



FKEE-STATE LYEICS— No. III. 



[This was written In Jane or July of 1857, after his return to Kansas with Mr. 
Thaddeus Hyatt, on the small steamer "Lightfoot," which was brought from Cincin- 
nati to Lawrence via the Ohio and Missouri rivers by that gentleman.] 

"We will subdue you." 

— Douglas and the Southern Press. 

Aye! tell it to the slaves that quake 

Among your cane-fields and your swamps; — 
Aye! hiss it to the wrecks ye make 

Beneath your chamber's midnight lamps! 
With curses from your coward lips — 

With tortures and with threats to kill, 
And damning stripes from streaming whips, 

Subdue your chattels to' your will. 

But never speak those words to us 

Who draw free breath on Freedom's soil; 
Lest on your heads the slanderous 

Black lie of blasphemy recoil ! 
We owe no fealty to you, 

Whose gold is slippery with the gore 
Your horrid knives and scourges drew 

From those gashed souls you lord it o'er. 

(39) 



io 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

There moves no savage through your clime, 

Though belted to the ribs with steel, 
And choked up to the teeth with crime, 

Of whom we dare not think and feel, 
And speak, too, as the Truth shall list, 

In tones that scorch, or words that warm, 
Till pelted, pilloried and hissed, 

He slinks forth from the people's scorn. 

Subdue us ? When your brutal hordes 

Were spewed up as from sickened hell, 
And gleaming guns and bristling swords 

Across your startled vision fell — 
Forget ye how your courage went 

In pallor that we yielded not; — 
And what swift wings your quick fear lent, 

At crack of our shrill rifle-shot ? 

At Franklin, in the dead of night, 

And green Palmyra's bloody fray; 
And Osawatomie's red fight, 

And Lawrence on that Sabbath day, 
We taught you lessons that should hush 

Your braggart tongues in very shame, 
And cause your craven blood to gush 

In living sheeets of crimson flame. 

Subdue us % Why the babes that lie 

In waiting for our daily kiss 
Of greeting, as we hasten by, 

Do scoff at ye for cowardice! 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 4:1 

And gray-haired fathers, tottering past, 
And clinging woman's flute-like notes, 

That swelled out to a battle-blast, 

Cram the foul falsehood down your throats. 

Subdue the children of the men 

Who launched the Mayflower on the seas, 
And heard God talking with them, when 

Beneath their bended Pilgrim knees 
The whitened rocks of Plymouth thrilled, 

And started like a living soul, 
At those deep cries of faith that stilled 

The lashed waves into calm control ? 

Subdue the sons of those who fought 

Knee-deep in blood on Bunker Hill, 
Nor ever rested till they wrought 

Heaven's teachings on a monarch's will ? 
Subdue a people who subdue 

The forests and the mighty plains, 
And make the old earth ring anew 

With answering songs of higher gains? 

Subdue us ? Aye ! perchance ye may, 

When, rising up to manly aims, 
Ye cast your scowling pride away, 

And wipe the purple from your names : 
Aye ! when ye win the highest place 

Of honor in these peerless wars 
Of strength and truth and princely grace — 

Ye shall be called as conquerors. 



42 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

We give the grasp of loving hands — 

We speak the words of kindly zeal, 
To all who crown the swarming lands 

With larger hopes of human weal; 
But while your "chivalry" begets 

Such ulcers on the Nation's heart, 
We break like reeds your empty threats, 

And stand like strangers — wide apart. 



FREE-STATE LYRICS— ~No. IV 



Old Greece hath her Thermopylae, 

And Switzerland her Tell; 
And we among the later free 

Have hero-men as well. 
The graves of glorious Marathon 

Are green above the dead; 
And we have battlefields whereon 

The trampled grass is red. 

Thank God, the voice that thrilled and ran 

Along the Spartan bay, 
Is in the soul of every man 

Who acts with us to-day. 
Thank God, the mothers of our time 

Have hushed their mother's breath; 
And given, in sacrifice sublime, 

Their sacred sons to death. 

Thank God, that something of the grace 

That clasped Socrates' brow, 
And shone in Christ's seraphic face, 

Is round about us now; — 



(43) 



44: TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Thank God, we still are free to give 

Our blood for Freedom's sake, 
And wear our soul's prerogative 

Of honor to the stake. 

Oh, well we know the pain and wrong 

Is sometimes hard to bear, 
And shafts of hatred lie along 

Our pathway everywhere; 
Yet God be thanked, we still have those 

Who kissed the Truth and died, 
As grandly as a bridegroom goes 

Unto his waiting bride. 

They touch our lives with love and awe, 

Like eucharistic wine, 
And ever to their graves we draw, 

As to a prophet's shrine; 
For, while Greece hath Thermopylae, 

And Switzerland her Tell, 
We, children of the later free, 

Have kings and priests as well ! 

Lyric No. IV was first published in the Herald of Freedom, and 
then, in the order given, in the Kanzas News series. During and 
after the Civil War, the poet rewrote this striking lyric in several 
extended forms, the latest of which is found in the Funk & Wagnalls 
volume, 1898. 



FKEE-STATE LYRICS— Xo. V. 



[Suggested by certain explicit Anti-Slavery resolutions, passed at a general con- 
vention held in Topeka, K. T., Feb. 12, 1857. The writer was then in New York City. 
Republished from the Kanzas News, 1857.] 

Thank God, thank God, ye did not flinch 

A single hair's-breadth from the way, 
Nor lose the thousandth of an inch 

Of royal manhood on that day. 
Thank God, your words were calm and strong, 

And keenly tempered with the truth, 
And ringing as a battle-song, 

And proud as fiery-hearted Youth. 

By Heaven ! it swept throughout my soul 

With such a mighty rhythmic tread, 
As though it were the thunder-roll 

Of God's world, walking overhead; 
O, high above my petty reach 

Along the listening heights it passed, 
Brimful of burning inner speech 

As Paul, when Felix stood aghast. 

My Spirit starting from her sleep 

Into a crowned and queenly mood, 
Clave on like light across the deep 

Of silence and of solitude; 
(45) 



46 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

And, with the sweat upon her brows, 
Stood once again beside you there, 

In quick acceptance of the vows 

White-winged, as Christ's own angels are. 

O, hearts, that sicken at the wrong! 

O, eyes, a-straining for the light ! 
O, homeless souls, whose better song 

Swells upward to the Infinite ! 
0, mothers, waiting for your sons ! 

O, sons, whose clenched lips never smile ! 
O, dreary hearts of drooping ones — 

Be patient for a little while. 

For, sure as God's evangel moves 

The hidden pulses of the spheres, 
Thus surely do the Unseen Loves 

Thrill onward through the greatening years. 
So keep ye still your lofty faith, 

Your kingly hopes, your sacred pledge; 
The crown of Truth the true heart hath, 

Hangs close upon the morning's edge. 



FKEE-STATE LYKICS— N T o. VI. 



[Addressed to those Free-State men who petitioned the Lecompton Legislature for 
charters of incorporation.] 

What ho there, brothers ! can it be 

That almost ere the battle-cries 
Which shook jour hearts so stormfully 

Have died into the distant skies, 
Ye have so utterly forgot 

Your high Apostleship of old, 
That, like abhorred Iscariot, 

Ye barter our dear Christ for gold \ 

O, have ye less of manhood now, 

Than when, in blackest solitude, 
God's signet-seal on every brow, — 

Erect and calm and unsubdued, 
Ye stood up underneath the rifts 

Of dark and doom and deepest ire, 
And sang the burning song that drifts 

Across the land like sweeps of fire ? 

Think ye the coins that cram your purse — 
Your "chartered" titles to your lands — 

Can wipe away the damning curse 

That clings unto your unclean hands ? 
(47) 



48 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

What! will ye sell, 'fore God's own face, 
The birthright of the highest born? 

And sink your knightly thrones of grace 
Into the mire of abject scorn? 

You, keepers of our sacred trust? 

You, guardians of the ancient Right? 
You, with your petty lucre-lust, 

Fit watchers of the pregnant night ? 
O, only on the reverent ear 

The great prophetic voices fall — 
O, only when our eyes are clear, 

Is all our life Apocryphal ! 

What! will ye lick the feet of Power, 

Because its hands are red and strong? 
Or, thirsty for a vantage hour, 

Make bargains with triumphant wrong? 
O faithless brothers ! feel ye not 

Your tingling blood stand still with shame, 
And your false lips grow blistering hot, 

At whisper of our Freedom's name ? 

Alas ! even while the teeming Earth 

Is thrilling to your olden speech, 
The grandeur of heroic worth 

Is moving up beyond your reach; 
And close beside you in your path 

Are Heaven's avenging silences, 
To crash upon you like the wrath 

Of Christ upon the Pharisees ! 

Lawrence, Kansas, June 10, 1857. 



FKEE-STATE LYKICS— No. VII. 



"You must obey the laws and pay your taxes, or it will be war to 
the knife, and the knife to the hilt." 

— Speech of Sec. Stanton at Lawrence, April 2%, 1857. 

A tale our mothers used to tell 

Unto the "babes about their knees, 
Of how, when hoarse and terrible 

The King's voice swelled across the seas, 
The wronged and outraged people woke — 

And in one bolt of burning breath 
Crashed forth their smiting thunder-stroke 

Of "Liberty or death!" 

We stood and listened till we saw 

Their stern brows frowning in the air, 
And our deep sense of wondering awe 

Crept forth into our very hair, 
It whispered in our childish ears, 

It throbbed along our youthful breasts, 
And now, above our manly years, 

Crowned with one faith, it rests; 



(49) 



50 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Wherefore we look thee in the face, 

And tell thee that thy words are vain, 
Though all the rivers of the place 

Are swollen with other streams than rain; 
For, standing on God's certain Right, 

We answer thus these proud commands: 
" Thou canst not wring a single mite 

Of tribute from our hands. 77 

We fear no doom that thou canst give, 

Thou canst not either curse or bless. 
It is alike to die or live, 

To those who work in righteousness. — 
We will not bend our upright forms 

In worship of the base and false; 
But, though the world were split with storms, 

We shrink from nothing else. 

Oh, spurned, insulted and betrayed, 

There comes an hour when we shall stand 
To mark our loyal manhood weighed 

And balanced by a juster hand ! 
Wherefore, we meet thy bitter threat 

With this voice speaking from the dead: 
" In all the hours that rise and set, 

God ruleth overhead !" 



NOTE TO FREE-STATE LYRIC No. VII. 

Frederick P. Stanton, ex-Representative from Tennessee, was ap- 
pointed Secretary of the Territory of Kansas, soon after Mr. Bu- 
chanan was inaugurated President, March 4th, 1857. Robert J. 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 51 

Walker, ex- Senator from Mississippi, and the especial political 
antagonist of Jefferson Davis within the Democratic party, was 
selected for Governor in place of John W. Geary, of Pennsylvania. 
Both gentlemen were men of notable ability, Mr. Walker being a 
man of even more than national reputation, for as Secretary of the 
Treasury he achieved practically the reputation of being the first 
genuine Free-Trader in that office. Neither of them was counted 
as a Southern "fire-eater," and Walker was almost as distinctively 
anti-Calhounite in Southern politics as the great Missourian, Thomas 
H. Benton, himself. Both of them finally and manfully served the 
cause of free institutions in Kansas when they came to clearly per- 
ceive the nature and effects of the events and policies they were sent 
to advance in the interests of slavery, and its brand of sectionalism. 
Governor Stanton became in after-days a citizen of Kansas, and was 
undoubtedly highly esteemed by the people. He was a manly man, 
able as a lawyer and publicist, and brilliant as a speaker. He 
came to Kansas a believer in the idea that the Free-State people 
here were of the scuff and scum of the free States, and that their 
position was in fact one of insurgency. Like all of his party at 
that period, he assumed that in effect Territorial laws were laws 
of the United States, and must therefore be enforced even to the 
point of the bayonet. He did not realize till later that even were 
this true, the " Bogus Laws " as sought to be imposed on Kansas 
had no legal status, because plainly a usurpation imposed by an 
armed force of invaders from a State adjoining. Mr. Stanton was 
not quite equal to the measure of Judge Lecompte's infamy, when 
he charged that acts of resistance by Free-State people to such laws 
were in reality acts of "constructive treason" against the United 
States. But the speech which called out Realf's spirited lyric came 
very near that revival of " Bloody Jeffreys' " infamous dicta in the 
reign of James the Second. 

After conferences at Lecompton, Secretary Stanton made an early 
entrance into Lawrence. Under the auspices of Dr. Charles Robinson, 
an open-air meeting was at once convened in front of the Cincinnati 
House, a small hotel kept by two Massachusetts ladies, one of whom, 
Miss Lydia S. Hall, was quite favorably known as a infnor poet 
and editorial contributor to the once famous Lowell Offering, — the 
paper which was carried on by the women operatives of the Lowell 
(Mass.) cotton factories. Stanton spoke from the porch of the little 



52 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

two-storied hotel, and at once assumed a dragonade tone, declaring, 
after a few preliminary words of courtesy, that " The Territorial laws 
must be obeyed." At once the reply was from the entire crowd, 
"Never! Never!" The new Secretary became very angry, and with 
a flushed face shouted back: " I now tell you that if any man here is 
prepared to say that he will resist those laws, with that man I de- 
clare war, and war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt." 

His voice was drowned at once by shouts of " Never ! " I am 
quoting from the letter of John Henry Kagi, over the signature of 
" Mohawk," as published in the New York Tribune of May 5th. Kagi 
and myself were, as far as I recall, the only shorthand reporters 
in the Territory and present at the meeting. One of the dramatic 
incidents was the flashing of a bowie-knife over his head by a very 
tall man in the rear of the crowd, with the shout, " Well, come 
on, — you can have your war at once," or words to that effect. Still, 
the assemblage was entirely good-natured, and no personal harm 
was meant the new official. We took our politics in those days 
demonstratively, and as men even now applaud doses of strong melo- 
drama. Dr. Eobinson poured oil on the troubled waters, and Mr. 
Stanton, with something of a blanched face and startled look, molli- 
fied his tone, but still repeated his text that "the Territorial laws 
must be obeyed." He was again met by good-natured yet quite deri- 
sive shouts of "Never!" He closed his speech, and Judge G.W.Smith, 
an able and much respected lawyer, of advanced years, made a speech 
in reply. It was cool, courteous, and logical, giving the history of 
the Missouri usurpation, and assuring the Federal official that ex- 
cept by extermination, there could never be achieved an effective en- 
forcement of such enactments. The Poet's stirring rejoinder is in 
the same spirit. 

Shortly after, Governor R. J. Walker arrived, and soon issued an 
inaugural address much more moderate and adroit in tone and 
temper. The Poet's response, addressed to the Governor, will be 
found in Free-State Lyric No. VIII. 



FKEE-STATE LYRICS— Xo. VIII. 



If, as we hope, thy feet are set 

Upon the side where Truth is King, 
No throned monarch ever yet 

Had deeper-hearted welcoming ; 
But if, as some of us have feared, 

Thy soul is false unto the land, 
Thou wilt not be the more revered, 

Because our lives are in thy hand. 

We have no suppliant knee to bend, 

We sue for no unrighteous peace; 
No one of us will ever lend 

His manhood to Slav'ry's caprice: 
The arm yon blue-eyed stripling lacks, 

The gash that seams that old man's brow, 
Are of the pregnant battle-facts 

By which we swear and suffer now. 

All loyal vows free hearts may take — 
All worthy deeds free hands may do, 

For truth and God, and conscience' sake — 
So much we proffer here anew. 



(53) 



54 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

But still no doom, no wreck, no wrath, 
No wild abyss of torturing pains, 

Can turn us from the living Faith, 

We drew from our free mothers' veins. 

But let us -pass ! We wait to see 

The growth thy ripened work shall reach; 
Lest haply all the harvest be 

A weary dearth of empty speech: 
Though of thy pleasure come what may, 

Be base or noble, as thou wilt, 
We stand forever, as to-day — 

Leagued foes unto this guilt. 



FKEE-STATE LYRICS— JSTo. IX. 



OUT OF THE WAY. 



[This poem was written after the convention at Grasshopper Falls, In August, 1857.] 

Out of the way, there ! ye who stand 

Between us and the blessed light 
That streams up where the promised land 

Dawns faint and far upon our sight: 
Out of the way, there ! ye who call 

Our faith and works too bold and hot; 
We move in column like a wall — 

Out of the way ! We need you not. 

Out of the way, there ! ye who give 

Your free hopes, reaching to the skies, 
For that poor trembling fugitive — 

The thing ye call a "compromise" : 
Out of the way, there ! ye who fear 

To choose the right, or spurn the wrong: 
Out of the way, there, Insincere! 

And let the people pass along. 



(55) 



56 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



Out of the way, there! ye who think 

God's battles can be bought and sold; 
God's voices silenced by the clink 

Of silver, or the touch of gold: 
Back to the safety which befits 

Your smooth lips and your scented words 
Out of the way, there, Hypocrites! 

For this is Truth's hour and the Lord's. 

What shall our soul that saw and heard 

The living covenants of God, 
And marked His angel's flaming sword 

In all the places that we trod, — 
Shall we tear off the crowns that press 

Our foreheads as the touch of stars, — 
And, for your velvet littleness, 

Give up our grand old battle-scars ? 

Out of the way, there ! Ye cannot buy 

Our Israel with your subtle creeds, 
While all the wilderness doth lie 

In manna for our human needs: 
Back to your neshpots and your chains, 

Your brackish waters and your thirst, — 
Thank God, our manhood still remains! 

Stand back! — we will not be accursed. 



NOTE TO FREE-STATE LYRIC No. IX. 

The Grasshopper Falls Convention decided for the Free-State 
party that the effort should be made to seize power through voting 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 



57 



under the bogus laws, repeal the same when our majority accom- 
plished its work, and enact a law for the convening of a constitutional 
convention. Such a law was enacted ; the convention met at Leaven- 
worth, and framed the Free-State instrument known in the State's 
history by the name of that city. 

At the time of this decision, the radicals, like Realf, Redpath, 
Conway, William A. Phillips, W. B. Parsons, Tappan, myself and 
others, felt as if the Free-State cause had been dealt a deadly blow. 
But, of truth, it was not so, as we can now see by the light of 
subsequent events. The commercial apostasy which the town-site 
traffickers, the Indian Trust Land jobbers and the new-comers who 
" knew not Israel," had tried to make effective in the late winter 
and early spring of 1857, failed completely. But the political con- 
ditions had changed; the Pro-Slavery position was more crafty, and 
the possible outcome was more dangerous. The Lecompton Consti- 
tution — framed by those who represented less than one-seventh of 
the actual voters in the Territory, and the whole legislation that 
produced it having been a usurpation and the result of an invasion — 
was in danger of being accepted in Congress. The Buchanan ad- 
ministration had determined to force it through. Senator Henry 
Wilson while on a visit to the Territory had strongly urged that 
there was no danger that the people of the free States would mis- 
judge our action or consider it an abandonment of a historic and 
honorable position. By doing it we might also avert a civil war, 
as to force a slave constitution upon us would put us under the 
deliberate necessity of resisting the United States. 

In looking back over the long vista of years and momentous events, 
I can perceive now that the Grasshopper Falls Convention's decision 
tended to prevent a possible Northern revolt, while it more cer- 
tainly and effectually aided in checkmating the Lecompton con- 
spiracy. We did get possession of the Territorial machinery; we 
passed the Constitutional Convention bill, and framed a new Free- 
State organic instrument. We equipped the administrative ma- 
chine it proposed with elective Executive, Legislature, and Judiciary; 
and we decided, also, to elect the same men to the so-called Lecompton 
government. And the purpose was a clear one. If Congress had 
forced that instrument upon us without submission to a popular 
vote, we should have taken full possession of all its offices and 
powers, and then and there have substituted the Leavenworth Free- 



58 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



State instrument and powers for the Pro-Slavery one. The State 
would have been in the Union. We had 15,000 or more votes against 
their less than 3,000. It was a more or less clear apprehension of 
what was thus somewhat obscurely designed by the proposed policy, 
that had its effect in bringing about the " English bill," the anti- 
Lecompton revolt in Congress, and final submission to the popular 
vote, — which of course wiped out the danger. This phase of Kansas 
Territorial history seems to have been relegated to obscurity, yet 
it is one of the most remarkable features of our stirring overture in 
and to the great drama which nationalized Freedom and saved 
the American Union. 

This Lyric closes the series that Richard Realf gave to the Free- 
State struggle, though it does not by any means embrace his poetic 
contributions to the poetry and literature of Kansas. 



OTHER POEMS 



SONNET. 



(Written at the graves of the Kansas patriots.) 

Thank God, the Truth hath martyrs ! They do give 

A calm, perpetual glory unto it ; 

Quickening the clay of our insensitive 

Coarse natures, with the awe of infinite 

Vast thunder-crested grandeurs, such as sit 

On all the speaking mountains. O, the dead, 

How they do shame the living! How they warn 

Our little lives that chaffer for the bread 

Of peace — and tremble at the world's poor scorn, 

And pick their steps among the flowers, and tread 

Meekly and softly where the idols are ; 

Most fearfully of all their great strength shorn, 

When most they should rise up, and send afar 

Deep shouts of wrath and mighty cries of war. 

— Lawrence Republican, October 8, 1857. 



(61) 



KANSAS. 



Like the soft hand of love falls the air on my brow, 

And sweet are the memories clasping me now, 

And holy as life is the beauty that thrills 

Through the hearts of the valleys, the views of the hills, 

And sacred my home o'er the far-away sea; 

Yet dearer than all is dear Kansas to me. 

O, she draws me and awes me with truth and with light, 
As a Poet is drawn by the stars of the night, 
And she touches the quick of my soul till it swims 
On a sea of pure glory and blossoming hymns. 
And I love her with beauty that seems to excel 
The grandeur of heaven and the terrors of hell. 

But not for the lavishing riches she owns, 

And not for the wealth of her mountainous thrones, 

And not for the forests that girdle her streams, 

Nor her plains that melt as the amber of dreams, 

And not for the spirit-like swell of her slopes, 

Do I crown her with all the delights of my hopes. 

But for queenliness, shown in the terrible time 
When her raiment was soiled by the fingers of crime, 

(62) 



FEEE-STATE EYEICS 



63 



When the green of her gardens was spattered with red, 
And the terraces dripped with the blood of her dead, 
And her widows and orphans sat wringing their hands, 
While malice and murder stalked over her lands. 

For the storm which flashed forth from her beautiful 

eyes 
When her peerless affection was tempted with lies; 
For the blow that she dealt in the treacherous face 
Of the robber and spoiler who stood in her place; 
And the joy ojf her tears, like the sun on the mists, 
When she passed to the torture with chains on her wrists. 

For the majesty wreathing the steps of her youth, 

And all of her loveliness, all of her truth; 

For all the deep lessons of wisdom she taught, 

And all the great deeds which her strong hands have 

wrought ; — 
Oh, for this do I leap at the sound of her name, 
And love her with love that mounts upward like flame. 



Written at Lawrence, Kansas, in December, 1856, and first pub- 
lished several months later, in the Lawrence Republican, August 27, 
1857. This version is taken by permission from the volume pub- 
lished by the Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York city, 1898. 



ADVEKTISEMENT. 



Desired: Information of Robert J. Walker, 

A sort of official political caulker 

To vessels of state, which hy tempest and tossing 

Spring aleak, and require most particular "bossing" ! 

He resided of late on the west side of Lawrence, 

(A town which he holds in emphatic abhorrence;) 

Encamped, as I learn, in his Uncle Sam's tent, 

Where by turns both his wrath and his liquor find vent! 

He is wanted : a matter awaits his decision, 

Too vast for the scope of my poor mental vision. 

It was argued last night that the " line Isothermal/' 

(The debate was productive of very fierce turmoil,) 

Was as empty of meaning, (so far as respected 

The question which Walker assumed it affected,) 

As the sands of the desert are fruitless of rains, 

Or devoid as the skull of said Walker of brains! 

But, believing such slur to be very improper, 

I thought I would deal it a manifest "stopper" 

By asking the Governor, first, to explain 

The real quantum of meaning the words do contain; 

And next to define, (for I doubt not he knows,) 

Where the said line commences, and whither it goes? 

Again: in another debate which occurred, 

Wherein the chief disputants strongly averred 

(64) 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 65 

That the old Grecian myth — transmigration of souls 
Into bodies of animals, fishes and fowls, 
Was fully as adequate, true and sublime, 
In complete application to men of our time, 
As to any or all of the sages which loom 
Through the mist of that epoch of grandeur and gloom. 
One speaker declared as his honest conviction, 
(ISTor was he rebuked by the least contradiction,) 
That if such were the case, it was equally true 
That the souls of said animals dwelt in us too! 
And asserted, with nourish and figures and tropes, 
(Like a spread-eagle dancing a tune on tight ropes,) 
That from all he could learn of the wisdom and pluck 
Of the "wandering minstrel" employed by old Buck, 
To warble the praises of "national" themes, 
Though as yet he has given us but dissonant screams,) 
He assuredly thought it had now come to pass, 
That in Walker himself was the soul of an ass! 
But I, who have studied him closely and long, 
Decide that the speaker's conclusions were wrong; 
And, placing implicit belief in the fact 
That we yearn to the things which most strongly attract, 
Conceive that his spirit uneasily roams 
'Mong the shovels that lie in our scavenger's home, 
Or else that it forms the symmetrical part 
Of the body and wheels of our watering-cart! 
Now if Robert will deign to peruse this brief treatise, 
And tell us explicitly which of the three 'tis 
Applies with most accurate force to himself, 
He will very much favor his friend, 
—5 Richard Realf. 



66 



TWENTIETH CENTUEY CLASSICS 



NOTE TO ADVERTISEMENT. 



The foregoing jeu d' esprit was published in the Kanzas News, 
Emporia, in the early half of June, 1857. It is now given from an 
original print, in form of a little dodger which was surreptitiously 
distributed among United States soldiers (Second Dragoons) who 
were encamped on West Lawrence, partly as unneeded protection to 
Governor Robert J. Walker, but the more to overawe the business 
men of the town, who had organized a voluntary sanitary and police 
movement therein. 

John E. Cook, afterwards executed at Charlestown, Va., in Decem- 
ber, 1859, for participation in the Harper's Ferry Raid of October 
17th and 18th preceding, had a real-estate office in Lawrence in the 
spring and summer of 1857. Cook, Realf, Spencer, and myself 
(occasionally) lodged in the same building. We were all determined 
opponents of the movements to which George W. Brown gave the 
real initiative, and by which his paper, the Herald of Freedom, was 
finally discredited as a Free-State advocate, for the formation of a 
mongrel (Free-State) Democratic party, and for accepting both the 
" Bogus Laws " and the Pro-Slavery Lecompton Constitution scheme, 
under the pretense that being in the majority, we could easily gain 
possession of the existing Territorial usurpation, and also take con- 
trol for its overthrow of the State (Pro-Slavery) government there- 
under after Kansas had been admitted to the Union. This scheme 
was as to the first segment born mainly of a desire to deal in new 
and old town-lot enterprises, such as Quindaro, Sumner, Emporia, 
et al.; and as to the second, from the desire of the administration's 
later appointments, as Geary, Walker, Stanton, etc., to get into more 
reputable conditions than surrounded them at Lecompton, as well 
as open a possible way for the ambitions of aspiring gentlemen or 
broken-down statesmen that Presidents Pierce and Buchanan de- 
sired to have taken care of in Kansas. It is a matter of historical 
record that both Geary and Walker had early, if but dim visions, 
of a Senatorship by the road indicated. We, young and ardent 
Free-Soilers, leaning to the new Republican party when the time 
for division should come, were determined in our opposition to all 
back-door betrayals of historic positions within the Free-State ranks. 
We were a part, too, of the unyielding corps of special correspond- 
ents. Only two of these were ever known to me as leaning towards 
the G. W. Brown drift: one was Edmund Babb, who was involved in 



EEEE-STATE LYEICS 



67 



the doubtful Quindaro town-site business, with Governor Robinson, 
and the other was Albert D. Richardson, whose conservative dispo- 
sition was antagonized by the local Montgomery-Fort Scott troubles 
about that date. 

Cook, among other belongings, had secured a small hand-press, 
about fifty pounds of type, and other means of doing a little 
job work. He himself set up cards and handbills of his own business; 
and when we wanted a little fun, we all turned in and got out politi- 
cal dodgers. Realf had a ready pen for pasquinades of the sort I have 
given here. Several others have been mentioned to me, copies whereof 
I have not been able to secure. One correspondent informed me of 
a witty narrative written on some incident in the Iowa march of 
the fall ("56) emigrant train of which Realf, Eldridge, Pomeroy and 
Daniels were conductors. Another has mentioned a stirring and 
denunciatory lyric anent the conduct of U. S. Deputy Marshal Pres- 
ton, sent with Lieut. Col. Philip St. George Cooke's command to 
arrest that emigrant train in Nebraska. The personal parody of 
"Cock Robin," which follows this, is of the same order; and I hold 
the manuscript of a savagely sarcastic lyric entitled " Phillipenae," 
written in 1866, in denunciation of an oration, " The South Vic- 
torious," with which Wendell Phillips recognized in advance what 
the facts of political history proceeded steadily to illustrate for a 
number of years thereafter. 

The particular cause for writing the "Advertisement'* was the 
fact that Governor Walker allowed himself to be persuaded by the 
Lecompton politicians, and perhaps also some who were nearer to 
us, that the effort of Lawrence business men to water and keep clean 
their streets, etc., by voluntary subscriptions to the expenses thereof, 
was in reality a movement designed to set in motion piecemeal the 
machinery of civil government, under the Topeka (Free-State) Con- 
stitution. The watering-cart Realf used for his satire was part of 
this "dread" process. In elucidation of another reference, the "iso- 
thermal" line theory, it must be stated that this was part of a 
peculiar stock of pseudo-scientific assumptions in favor of chattelism 
and racial subordination that the sciolists of the Knott, Glidden, 
DeBow, Maury and Walker theorists were in the habit of presenting, 
to cover their aberrations from fundamental conceptions of democ- 
racy, as a philosophy of government. We are not wholly unfamiliar 
with the same ideas in modified forms and terms, even in these 
latter years. 



68 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



The effect of Realf s "advertisement" was almost immediate, when 
taken in conjunction with dispatches from Col. Sumner at Fort 
Riley, relative to hostile movements of the Cheyenne " Dog soldiers." 
It is worthy a brief comment, that the remnant of this once formi- 
dable body of aboriginal raiders are now among the more prosperous 
of the Indian landlords who in Oklahoma as well as in Indian Ter- 
ritory, are reservation lessees to landless whites. The troops were 
sent to Fort Riley, entering at once on a memorable campaign, the 
watering-cart continued to sprinkle Massachusetts street, and Gov- 
ernor Walker retired in good order to Lecompton. 

An amusing, and at the time of happening, an interesting episode, 
which relieved, with a Homeric-breeding laughter, the general som- 
berness of the struggle of 1856-57, arose from the quarrelsome atti- 
tude of the editor of the Herald of Freedom towards the special corre- 
spondents in Kansas of the great Northern and Eastern newspapers 
which were doing so much to make freedom a possibility in Kansas. 
These correspondents were not renowned as respecters of persons. 
Quite early in their period of Territorial residence, they were com- 
pelled to rebuke Editor Brown. After the great influx from the 
free States during the winter and spring of 1856-57, which prac- 
tically settled, and permanently, too, the issues at stake in Kansas, 
G. W. Brown had cause of complaint against the correspondents 
other than their failure to recognize him as the one "great" man 
in the Free-State movement. That was the fact that their untiring 
activity in the gathering and forwarding of news, as well as their 
greater ability, too, collectively and individually, began to have a 
marked effect upon the prosperity of his paper. When, also, it 
became generally understood that G. W. Brown was not only ready 
to defame every other prominent or even active Free-State man, 
but that he was seriously involved in an effort to compromise with 
the Buchanan administration and its Territorial appointees, the 
correspondents all began to denounce him. I was, with Samuel 
F. Tappan, one of those he especially favored and flavored in ven- 
omous assaults. In an article printed by the Chicago Tribune, and 
of the preparation of which I had no prior knowledge, though I 
was then the special Kansas correspondent of that great journal, 
I find an account of some of the incidents that led to the accompany- 
ing parody. After referring to some attempt made by Mr. Brown 
to secure an encomium of his "courage" in the pro-slavery New York 
Herald, the Chicago paper says: 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 



69 



" It appears, however, from a letter in the Cincinnati Gazette, 
that Mr. Brown has made an effort to be brave under new cir- 
cumstances and with the following result. 

"An article appeared in the Herald of Freedom a short time since, 
under the title of 'Claqueurs,' in which the Kansas correspondents 
of the Eastern press were accused in general terms of being horse- 
thieves. On the morning following the appearance of this compliment 
Mr. Brown was waited on at his office by several correspondents, 
who wished to know whether they were particularly referred to — 
one or two of them being prepared to correct the error by thrashing 
the editor. Mr. Brown made an apology in each instance, and thus 
escaped unflogged. We copy from the Gazette: 

"'Mr. Hinton, a reporter for the Boston Traveller, called upon Mr. Brown and de- 
manded a retraction, which was complied with. Hinton then left for southern Kansas, 
after which Brown denied having taken back anything in reference to Mr. Hinton. Mr. 
Richard Realf, a friend of the latter, in a letter to the editor, demanded an explanation 
of the difficulty, which Brown construed into a challenge. As Realf is a very small 
man, Brown considered it an easy matter to whip him, and replied to Mr. R. "that he 
had accepted the alternative," and referred the whole matter to his second, Mr. Nixon. 
Mr. R. called upon Mr. Gh W. Smith, jr., and appointed him his second to confer with 
and make arrangements with Mr. Nixon. Brown being, as he considered, the chal- 
lenged party, had the choice of weapons and place, and gave notice that he should 
"•fight with rawhides," and the place, the Herald of Freedom office, both of which 
propositions were objected to by Mr. Smith on the ground that "rawhides were not 
mortal weapons and the place inconvenient." Realf is a small man, not more 
than five feet two or three inches in height, and very slight, while Brown is a 
big, stout, broad-shouldered man, over six feet high. Realf is a clerk in the. Emigrant 
Aid house, and has never done any labor to harden and develop his muscles ; but Brown 
was brought up a wood-chopper on the Western Reserve, and is a man of great muscular 
strength. It was finally compromised by retaialng the rawhides, and making the place 
of meeting in the Delaware Reserve, just over the river. At the time specified, Mr. R. 
and his friend were on the ground. Half an hour later Mr. Brown and his friend made 
their appearance and demanded further negotiations. It is not known how many coats 
the cowardly editor had on, but he would not fight unless his opponent would promise 
not to strike him above the shoulders, which promise Mr. Realf declined to make, as 
rawhides were not his own choice. He should use it as he pleased, and to the best ad- 
vantage. Brown considering it a good time to back out, hastily retreated to his office, 
followed by Mr. Realf, who denounced him publicly as he went along, as a coward, liar, 
etc., all of which Mr. Brown submitted to without a word. This morning a poster in 
large letters, signed by Realf, made its appearance all over town, denouncing Brown 
as a liar, slanderer, and coward. A public cowhiding of Brown by Mr. Realf is ex- 
pected to be the termination of the affair, which has already been the cause of consid- 
erable merriment.' 

" The Chicago Times is now quoting Brown to bring the Free- 
State cause into disrepute, and to vilify the Free-State men for re- 
sisting the enactments of the Missouri ruffian Legislature." 

This statement is copied from the Lawrence Republican August 6, 
1857. Returning to Lawrence from Emporia the day after the in- 
cident described, I at once, on being informed of Brown's renewed 
libel on myself, called, unarmed in any way other than with my 
own vigor, on Brown at his office. Refusing a retraction, he drew 
a pistol upon me, when he found I was without one. Before he 
could use it I managed to confuse him by throwing a bowl of paste 
in his face, and after striking at him with a handy chair, got out 



70 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



of his office unscathed. That evening Realf wrote the following. 
It was "set up," and a few copies printed and circulated in the 
town. To my knowledge no full copy remains, and I offer the lines 
after Cock Robin as in several places amended or filled by memory: 

"Who killed the Herald?" 
"I," said Richard Hinton— 
"With the paper I print on — 
I killed the Herald." 

"Who killed the Herald?" 
"I" said the poet, Realf — 
"I did it all myself — 

I killed the Herald." 

"Who killed the Herald?" 
"I," said James Redpath — 
"I crushed it in my wrath — 
I killed the Herald." 

"Who killed the Herald?" 
"I," said Samuel Tappan — 
"I saw it nappen — 

I killed the Herald." 

"Who killed the Herald?" 
"I," said John E. Cook— 
"Its lies I couldn't brook — 
I killed the Herald." 

"Who killed the Herald?" 
"I," said Henri Kagi — 
"And then I saw it die — 

I killed the Herald." 

"Who killed the Herald?" 
"I," said the Tribune's Bill—* 
"The darned thing I meant to kill — 
I killed the Herald." 

♦William A. Phillips, of the N. Y. Tribune,— afterwards Congressman from Kansas. 



SCORN. 



[To Brooks .: South Carolina — for his assault on Sumner.] 

Anathema Maranatha ! Lc: the curse 

Cleave like God's doom unto this second Cain ! 

Let his soul reck and rot from worse to worse, 
And all men's hatred burn into his brain. 

And his heart writhe with such a damning force, 
So blasted by the red-hot clasp of pain. 

That all his days and all his nights shall pass 

As in a seething sea of molten bi 

Anathema Maranatha! Gibed and hiss 

Let him slink heUward through the scoffing spheres; 
_gered and blinded by the wrathful fist 
Of the deep hate of all the gathered years : 
And never more his craven cheek be kissed 

By the warm rain of childhood's blessed tears : 
one pure token touch his festering lips. 
ai brighten on his life's eclipse. 

Anathema Maranatha ! Seared and charred — 
Shriveled forever with a terrible blight. 

Let the foul dastard's red right hand be marred. 
And his shrunk sinews wither from their lniarht : 

n 



72 



1 'd TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Let little children, playing on the sward, 

And maidens, whispering of a dear delight, 
And old men tottering, stop to link his name 
With all of blackest infamy and shame. 

Anathema Maranatha! Let him lie 

Scathed by the mercy of the man whose blood 

Reeks np to vengeance to the purple sky 
Upon the thrice-accnrsed thing who could 

So sell his proper manliness to buy 

Such damned favor from so dark a brood. 

Yea, let him tremble, for the tyrant falls 

When stricken Sampson grasps his pillared halls. 



The above poem was written at the Five Points House of Industry, 
New York city, in May, 1856, following the attack on Charles Sumner 
in the U. S. Senate Chamber; and as it was a serious part of the 
events which belong to Free-State history, and led to able and bril- 
liant young men like Richard Realf becoming identified with the 
Kansas struggle, it is given here. 



THE INAUGUBATIOK 



(March 4, 1857.) 



Very wanly to the eastward breaks the morning cold and 

Very spectral seem the shadowed people moving down 

the way, 
Very feebly will the sunlight dance upon the hills to-day. 

Very loudly do the silver trumpets ring throughout the 

street, 
Very grandly fall the measured marches of the throng- 
ing feet, 
Very hoarse are all the voices of the beings whom I meet. 

And the mighty thunderous echoes of the cannon crash 

and boom 
Like the roar of coming people speaking to us through the 

gloom, 
And the startling noises shake the pictures hanging in 

my room. 

Very proudly float the silken colors on the capitol, 
Very firmly does the old man tread across the Senate Hall, 
Very bland and very gracious is the smile he smiles on all. 

(73) 



74 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



Lo ! before our sacred Country's solemn altar see him 

stand, 
With the Book of naming wisdom open in his hand, 
Swearing that in calm-souled justice he will judge and 

rule the land. 

And the eyes of staring thousands bend in wonder on 

the sight, 
And the hum. of human voices cleaveth upward through 

the light, 
And the maddening waves of music drown the moanings 
of the night. 

Very courtly are the courtiers who have snatched the gifts 

of chance, 
Very brightly gleam the jewels of the movers in the dance, 
Very calmly from the fresco does the unknown hand ad- 
vance. 

And the naked fiery fingers upon the ball-room wall — 
Lo ! it is the song of many godlike spirits held in thrall, 
Suffering deadly, damning scourges for the human rights 
of all. 

In the newer fields of Freedom, where its last Apostles 

stood, 
Glare the serpent eyes of Hatred, lie the pools of clotted 

blood, 
And a stifling cry of murder shudders at the gates of God. 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 



75 



And the mother with her children sits and starves upon 

the plain, 
As the ghastly gory gash that cast her husband with the 

slain 
Swings before her eyes forever, splitting through her heart 

and brain. 

And the smoke of burning hamlets blackens all the blessed 



air, 



7 

While the savage shout of recking devils in their slaughter- 
lair 

Mingles with the shivering shrieks of trampled virgiu- 
hood's despair. 

And the clattering fetters fester on the brothers and the 

sons 
Who have battled for their Israel in the later Ajalons, 
And the purple darkly trickles down the swooning cham- 
pions. 

Foemen smear upon our foreheads bitter marks of fear 
and shame, 

And they trail their leprous fingers o'er our Mother Free- 
dom's name, 

Till the hot blood driving through us sets our very breath 
aflame. 

Where is judgment, that it lingers through the years thus 
overlong % 

Where is Justice, that she comes not fronting the accursed 
wrong, 

In whose choking grasp her righteous infant struggles to 
be strong? 



76 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



O, not evermore with triumph shall inhuman feet be shod, 
Nor our heart's dew drip forever from the slaver's evil rod, 
And not always shall hell's scoffing banner flout the skies 
of God. 

For through all the mournful midnights, keeping solemn 

watch and ward, 
Stands the silent sleepless Angel noting all the deeds ab- 
horred, 
And the hour of wrath and ransom ripens surely, saith 

the Lord! 



This striking poem was written in Washington, and first pub- 
lished in the Lawrence (Kansas) Republican, April 29, 1857. This 
version, taken from my volume, " Poems of Richard Realf," is given 
here by permission of the Funk & Wagnalls Publishing Co., New 
York. 



TO LORD BYROX. 



Thou wild-eyed wanderer in the spirit land, 
Thou haughty slave — thou solemn mockery, 

Thou thing of fret and fever — I command 

Thee now, in mine own name, that thou be free 

To take thy palpable form of flesh, and stand 
There — so — before me — that these eyes may see 

The white-lipped coward that struck the sightless air, 

And lashed himself to furious despair. 

Come, now, thou pitiful lie — from the dark deep 
Wherein, with Cain's hot curse upon thy brow. 

Yearning unspeakably for rest and sleep, 

To rid thee from thy hell of throb and throe 

Thou fleest forever from the stings that keep 
Tracking thy baffled footsteps, like a foe 

Reddens whose soul for blood : come, take thy form 

And let me look on thee — thou night of storm ! 

Lo! there thou standest! How thine orbs do glare. 
And wherefore hath thy brow that blasting scowl? 

Kay, think not thou canst fright me : I can bear 
More agony than ever wrung thy soul, 

And deem it sportiveness : — thou didst not dare 
To touch the lees that lay in thy life's bowl, — 

(77) 



78 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



I have drained mine and left the goblet dry, 
And yet there is no madness in mine eye. 

Wherein art thou above me ? Have I not 
A shoreless sea of love and hate and pride 

On whose wild billows, when my heart is hot, 
In loftiness of majesty I ride, 

Grasping in scorn with my vast grip of thought 
Half Heaven, all earth and hell! I have defied 

That whereto thou hast knelt: shall I not fling 

My soul's scorn in thy teeth, thou spirit thing? 

Wherein art thou my peer ? Have I not known 
Most lordly tongues lick up my feet's wild dust 

Have I not in the midnight stood alone 

And dared through all the tempest to be just? 

Have I not passed on to my soul's throne 

Through thrice-deep crowds of leprosy and lust, 

Unharmed by all their harlotry ? And thou — 

Whose is the mark upon thy burning brow ? 

Back, slave, to thy probation ! I* will seek 
No word of guidance from a thing like thee. 

Why, Jove may let his shattering thunders wreak 
Upon thy head their worst intensity, 

And with a prodigal pride upon my cheek 
I can stand up and smile defiantly, 

Bidding the blast beat on. Thou foaming fool, 

I learned no lessons in thy shallow school. 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 

Therefore I do refuse thee homage — thou 
Wert but a puny thing. — It little boots 

To thee/ what I am; but I shall endow 

The passing years with vigor — such as suits 

The proper pride with which I greet thee now: 
And if upon my lips the summer fruits 

Deaden to ashes, let the joy depart — 

I shall not be the coward that thou art. 



79 



This striking, if extravagant, effusion has never been published. 
It is copied from the original manuscript. The circumstances under 
which it was written are as follows: In the summer of 1857, James 
Redpath returned to Lawrence, Kansas, from Boston, where but a 
few months before he had married a beautiful and talented woman, 
identified with the earlier spiritualism and sometimes written of 
as the New England " Madame de Genlis," a French lady known to 
history as the founder of the " Quietism " — a religious movement 
with which Archbishop Fenelon was also connected. Redpath was 
then a devoted believer in the manifestations known as spiritualism. 
We had a series of remarkable seances at the Whitney House, Law- 
rence, and Realf was always at the table. It is not unknown to 
readers of modern literature that in his boyhood Realf was aided 
among other friends, to education and social advantages by Lady 
Noel Byron, the poet's widow. He became an intense partisan of 
her side of a subdued controversy relative to Lord Byron's treat- 
ment of her, and was always angered at the idea that he might per- 
haps be a son of the great English poet. As he was not born till 
about seven years after Byron's death, the suggestion was in itself 
an absurdity. But Realf exhibited an eager desire to receive some 
communication from the elder poet's wraith. And the rest of us 
planned, with Redpath's connivance (he being the chief medium), 
to oblige him at last. We "faked" for Realf's benefit a series of 
patronizing and exasperating (to Realf) communications. They 
were decidedly clever, as was even r thing Redpath did, and Richard 
Realf took them in earnest. He became angry, and left the circle. 



80 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 



When I went to my room later, the handsome young poet handed 
me the manuscript of the poem, written in reply to our joke. He 
did not know of the trick till a few weeks before his unhappy death, 
when I told it on him among some friends in San Francisco. 



THE SPIRIT OF SOXG.* 



O high imp arable Spirit of Song, which dost 

Yield only evermore most palpable pain, — 
It is so hard and bitter that I must 

To all thy silent scantities attain, 
And not thy voiced serenities ; so hard 

To wear thy revelating crowns which prick 
Till the brows quiver, and to be debarred 

Thy kisses which thrill also to the quick, 
Cleansing our lips for singing. But I am dumb — 

Even in paths renunciative content — 
Content beneath thy solemn oriflamme, 

Albeit thou treadest not with me the ascent 
Of the high hills ; since only from such height 
Can Man conjecture of God's infinite. 

*By permission of Funk & Wagnalls Co., New York. This sonnet was written at 
Lawrence, early in December, 1856. 



-6 (81) 



TWO SONNETS.* 



I. 

I have been homeless such a weary while, — 
Have lived so long upon Love's scattered crumbs, 
Strewn in the outer alleys of the world; 
My naked heart has been so dashed and whirled 
From side to side in bitter martyrdoms, 
Made all the bitterer by the lean, sad smile 
Shivering upon my lips, that this new feast 
Whereto I am bidden as chief banqueter, 
And whereat, though my speech be of the least, 
I may bend on her my great, greedy eyes, 
Walk by her side, a reverent listener — 
Silent, 'til all my own soul's silences 

Burst into blossoming music: 't is too deep, 
Too very blessed ! Heart — be still and weep. 

II. 

I held her name between me and the sun, 

And then I staggered downward to my knees; 

O, blessed Christ! how my brain reeled and spun 
When, like a flash from the Eternities, 

*By permission of Funk & Wagnalls Co., New York. Poems of Richard Realf. 

(82) 



FEEE-STATE LYRICS 

The blinding blaze of burning glory clung 
Around the luminous letters, till the name 
Shot outward into breathing life, a flame 

With Godlike splendor, as a cloven tongue 

Of awful Pentecost! 

O Holiest 
Of all the holy! O great Infinite, 

Who through all works still workest all things best : 
I yield this name unto thee; pure and white 
Keep it, dear Father! Keep it in Thy sight — 

Keep it for me when my soul cannot rest. 



83 



These sonnets were addressed to Miss Hattie Burleigh, whose 
uncle was the once famous anti-slavery orator, Charles Burleigh. 
While R. R. was assistant superintendent of the Five Points House 
of Industry, 1855-56, he became enamored of this lady. Several 
beautiful poems were addressed to her, all written in Kansas. 



THE HYMN MY SOUL SANG. 



i. 

Beloved ! when a week ago, 
In my full spirit's overflow, 
I asked you if you could forego 

All higher dreams of happiness, 

To front all sorrows and distress 

For my sake, and you answered " Yes ! " 

When, standing on your parlor floor, 
In kinglier mood than ere before, 
I drew you to me more and more, 

And told you of the glorious hymn 
Sung by the unseen seraphim, 
Filling my soul up to the brim — 

With flood on flood of Godlike tones, 
Like those that swelled along the zones 
Far-reaching to the Heavenly thrones, 

And spoke of blessed fellowships 
Till all my life burst through my lips, 
As sunlight breaks from out eclipse, 

And all the solemn majesties, 
That sweep across the poet's skies, 

Stood flaming white before my eves; 

(84) 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 85 

Until (so great the glory was) 
I shuddered as I saw it pass, 
Reflected in the spangled glass, 

And felt my eyes grow dim with tears, 
And wondered if the after-years 
Could bring that holy day's compeers. 

II. 

You did not then, Beloved, know 

That through long months of ebb and flow 

My life had watched your own life grow, 

Shaping in love and reverence, 
To most divine and perfect ends, 
The moments the archangel lends, 

For silent deeds of sacrifice, 

And lofty hopes that crown and kiss 

The brow of calm endurances. 

You did not know you had so passed 
Into my being that at last 
The yearning-eyed Iconoclast, 

Who, self-willed in his sense of power, 
Did naught but curl his lips and shower 
Strange curses at the hollow hour, 

Hid sudden from his sullen pride, 
And crept so to the other side, 
That all things seemed half defied. 



86 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

III. 

O my Beloved ! if it be 

My blind soul's blind idolatry 

Which raises all things else through thee, 

And gives the faces that I meet 
About the corners of the street, 
A kindlier meaning, soft and sweet — 

A tender pressure to the hands — 
And deeper purples to the lands — 
With warmer sapphires to the sands 

That circle the encircling seas — ■ 

O, if they be idolatries 

That cast me on my naked knees, 

And thrill through all my veins like fire ! 
Not yet- — not yet, do I aspire 
O, my Beloved, to rise higher, 

And take the virtues that belong 
Unto the world's full-statured throng 
Of dusty manhood's, without song. 



This is one of the Burleigh poems, and heretofore unpublished, 
according to the best of information. It is copied from an original 
MS. read to me in the winter of 1856, in Lawrence, with the state- 
ment that it was written a few days before he left New York for 
Kansas. 



I EEMEMBEE. 



I remember — I remember — 

In the dying of the yes 
When I used to pine and sicken 

For a little human cheer; 
unto my crazy lett 

Came her answers warm and true. 
Quickening all the blood within me — 

I remember — yes, I do. 

I remember — I remember — 

:i I reached my home once more, 
w I hurried through the city 
Till I stood before her door; 
How I leaped along the stairway. 

How the staring servant new 
With the message of the stranger — 
I remember — yes, I do. 

I remember — I remember — 
How my foolish pulses shook 

When she met me in the parlor 
With the old beloved 1; 

(87) 



88 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

How my full eyes wet their lashes, 

How it thrilled me through and through 

When her dark orbs leaned toward me — 
I remember — yes, I do. 

I remember — I remember — - 

All our earnest poet-talks, 
All our mystic music-dreaming, 

Held in blessed city walks ; 
How we sat among the pictures 

Which the prophet-painters drew; 
And the speech of marble statues — 

I remember — yes, I do. 

I remember — I remember — 

How her sacred counselings 
Went across my moody nature 

Like a sweep of angel wings; 
And all the fellowships she gave me, 

All the peace that from it grew, 
And the weary, weary parting — 

I remember — yes, I do. 



This seems to be one of the Burleigh poems. It was written and 
published in Kansas, about the last of February, 1857. It is repub- 
lished here by permission of Funk & Wagnalls Co., New York. 



EXTKEATY.* 



[Written to Miss Burleigh, on the eye of leaving New York city, in the last of Sep- 
tember, 1856, for Kansas and the Free-State conflict.] 

Sometimes when the wind goes roaring 
Through the city's streets and lanes, 

And the homeless night is pouring- 
Blind tears on jour window panes; 

When you shudder for the sailor 
Cast up on the moaning sea, 

And the stranger in the forest, — 
Then, beloved, think of me. 

Sometimes, when the poet's verses 

Thrill you with a sudden awe, 
And dim, yearning depths of wonder 

Throb on every breath you draw; 
When his mighty anthem singing 

Of our high humanity, 
Parts your lips with fear and trembling, — 

Then, beloved, think of me. 

Sometimes, when you chance on stories 

Of a calm-eyed little band, 
Who, in frost and fire and famine, 

Were still faithful to the land; 

*By permission of Funk & Wagnalls, "Poems of Richard Realf," pp. 143, 144; 1898. 

(89) 



90 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Who, through all the bloody tortures 

Of a damning tyranny, 
Bore the draggled robes of Freedom,- 

Then, beloved, think of me. 

Think of me ! I hear the voices 

Of the struggle sweeping on, 
And I feel my mounting spirit 

Leap within me to be gone; 
But beneath no crown of sorrow, 

In no pride of victory, 
Can my heart forget its yearnings : 

So, beloved, think of me. 



DEAD. 



[From a manuscript book of poems in the possession of his sister, Mrs. Whapham, 
and written during his winter in Kansas.] 

She is dead — she is dead. 

Four years ago 
She bowed her beautiful head 

So low — so low. 

When I was led 
From the chamber of woe, 
There was pain in my head, 

Like a stunning blow; 
It will ever be so, 

Forever, I know, 

Till the daisies grow 

In my narrow bed. 

She is dead — she is dead; 

I shall never die, I fear; 

We were to have been wed 
In less than a year: 
I needed relief — 
So I crossed the sea : 

But when I touched the shore, 

Just as before 

Stared full upon me 

The shadow of grief. 
(91) 



92 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Wherever I go, 

By night or day; 
It moveth to and fro, 

Alway — alway, 
A dull, drowsy pain, 
Not a shock, nor a smart — 
Yet it burns to my brain, 

Aches in my heart. 
It is very sad 

That it will not pass away ; 

I think I shall go mad, 
Some day — some day. 



GOING HOME.* 



I think that in the time of year 

When all the earth is white with snow, 
And men run shivering to and fro 

About the frozen hemisphere; 

When all the lakes are fast asleep, 
And all the forest trees are bare; 
And, cold amid the icy air, 

The pale skies can no longer weep ; 

I will gird up my loins to make 
A journey o'er the sluggish seas; 
That, kneeling at my mother's knees, 

I may a little while forsake 

This deadly time of uncontrol — 
The weary toiling of the brain, 
The voice that like a moan of pain 

And darkness lingers in my soul. 

There are fine yearnings in the breath — 

Deep pulses in the silent heart 

Which, cast aside or rent apart, 
Like poor gashed veins will bleed to death. 

♦Originally printed in the Lawrence Republican, July 23, 1857; but found, also, in 
the Funk & Wagnalls volume, p. 162. 

(93) 



94 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

And I, who am sore parched with drouth, 
Have strangely hungered overmuch, 
For father's slightest finger-touch, 

And kisses from my mother's mouth. 

I see two sister-faces shine 

Around my footsteps more and more; 

And on the river and the shore, 
I hold a brother's hand in mine. 

So, when the early sunsets come, 

And, blazing on the household hearth, 
The ruddy yule-logs sparkle forth, 

I will go forward to my home. 



COMMUNION.* 



The dying daylight dies, Mother, 

It is the quiet even; 
Thy patient, tender eyes, Mother, 

Are brooding toward Heaven. 
Thy life is lifted there, Mother, 

For all thy scattered sheep : — 
O mind, O soul, O care, Mother, 

A Mother's prayer is deep. 

Across the aching sea, Mother, 

Is drawn a mystic chain 
Which lengthens unto me, Mother, 

And back to thee again, 
And skyward then doth grow, Mother, 

Beyond the utmost star: 
Ah ! all the angels know, Mother, 

How many links there are. 

It tightens round me now, Mother, 

I feel my spirit come 
Swifter than speeding prow, Mother, 

To thee, and peace, and home. 

* Originally printed during January, 1857, in the Kansas Herald of Freedom. In 
the Funk & Wagnalls volume, page 198, appears the same poem, with a few slight 
changes. I am permitted to use this. 

(95) 



96 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

I walk thine hallowed ground, Mother, 
I see thee tnrn, and start ; 

And now with one great bound, Mother, 
I fall upon thy heart. 

We sing the olden hymn, Mother, 

Unto the olden strain: 
What makes your eyes grow dim, Mother, 

With beatific rain? 
How far the world removes, Mother, 

What soft spells round me creep; 
O, in the love of loves, Mother, 

I wrap me up, and sleep. 



LETTERS FROM HOME.* 



Letters from my father's household, 

Isled amid the far-off sea; — 
Swift-winged messengers of gladness, 

Bearing rest and peace to me: 
Father's calm and sacred counsel — 

Mother's large and shining tears; 
And my sister's brimming blessings, 

Flung across the mighty years. 

Oh ! the dear and loving letters — 

Oh ! my childhood's thronging dreams ; 
Oh ! the ancient low-roofed cottage, 

With its quaint old oaken beams: 
Oh ! the haunts among the meadows — 

Oh ! the mossy garden seat, 
Where the scented apple-blossoms 

Swept in waves about my feet. 

And I sit and muse upon it 

Till I seem to see it all: 
See the rich grapes' purple clusters 

Drooping from the leafy wall; 

♦From Lawrence Republican, July 9, 1857. Found on page 116, "Poems of Richard 
Realf," Funk & Wagnalls, New York, by whose permission it is used here. 

-7 (97) 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

See the mellow pears a-ripening — 
Breathe the incense of the flowers; 

Watch the steady house-clock marking 
All the pulses of the hours. 

Father's hair is growing whiter — 

Mother's step is feebler now; 
But the olden queen-like beauty 

Lingers yet around her brow; 
And the low sweet tones that thrilled me, 

And the lips I used to press, — 
Oh! the years can never win them 

From their holy tenderness. 

And the flashing eyes of laughter 

With the speech of merry scorn; 
And the rippling auburn ringlets 

Of our household's youngest born — 
These have melted and have deepened 

To the glory and the grace 
Of a tranquil maiden, moving 

Thoughtfully throughout the place. 

Letters from my father's household, 

Isled amid the far-off sea; — 
Swift-winged messengers of gladness, 

Bearing rest and peace to me. 
Let the foaming world roar onward — 

Let the sinless children play, 
And the young bride clasp her husband: 

I am wealthiest to-day. ' 



SONNET— TO "MISS T * 



Do you remember how, a week ago, 

Your soul swelled out into a holy hymn; 
And how your spirit's passionate overflow, 
Like a pure Godlike glory, seemed to grow 

And greaten all around you, till the dim 
And silent presence trembled to and fro 

With living beauty, as though seraphim 
Had waved their wings above it ? O, the tones 

Of that wild singing — O, the subtle voice 
That shook me to the marrow of my bones, 

And clenched my Being till it had no choice 
But in meek reverence to follow it 
Along its starry pathway, thrilled and lit 
By the crowned radiance of the Heavenly thrones. 

♦Lawrence Republican, Oct. 8, 1857. 



In the Funk & Wagnalls volume there is a sonnet, page 17, 
" Poems of Richard Realf," under caption of " Viola's Song," which 
is a later version of the foregoing. The poem given here, however, 
was written during the winter of 1856; the other, in 1878. 



(99) 



A VOICE EKOM THE CONDEMNED CELL.* 



I think, by the streak of gray- 
Just over my window bars, 
And the waning of the stars, 

It must be the break of day. 

I hear the murmur of words 

Close by on the courtyard stones; 
I guess 't is the workman's tones, 

As they fix the scaffold boards. 

In three hours I shall be dead — 
Last week I hilted my knife 
To the heart of a rich man's life, 

And spent his money for bread. 

A dozen summers ago, 

(I was then a child cast forth 
Without a friend on earth,) 

He struck me a bitter blow. 

A blow and a coward's curse 

When I asked for a crust of bread ; 
And so I remembered his mood, 

And settled the wrong with worse. 

♦First published in the Lawrence Republican, Nov. 26, 1857, and used here by per- 
mission of Funk & Wagnalls, publishers, New York. 

(100) 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 101 

My vengeance was that which waits — 
So I let him fatten and fume 
Till I thought him ripe for doom, 

When I kicked him out to the Fates. 

A murderer ? Aye ! — who cares ? 

I let out the blood of his heart — 

So, having acted my part, 
I leave you not unawares. 

He "sowed the seed in my soul. 

And he reaped the ripened grain; 
'No doubt were he here again, 

He would speedily give the dole. 

I shall meet him to-day at seven — 

And yet, is it really well 

To strike me at once to Hell, 
When both might have gone to Heaven ? 



STANZAS FOE THE TIMES.* 



By Heaven! I half believe the Time 

Is linked and leagued with lowest Hell — 
The leprons soul of Wrong and Crime 

Performs its work so well. 
By Heaven! in bitter brooding dreams 

I think Life such a hollow lie 
That unto my hot heart it seems 

A wishful boon — to die. 

We smite, and sting, and howl, and hiss, 

Each hand a-grip on other's soul; 
Each bartering each with Judas' kiss 

Eor Judas' traitor-dole: 
Our breath — a breathed hypocrisy — 

Makes homeless Love weep piteous tears; 
While even the damned come forth to see 

Our slime upon the spheres. 

A golden passport unto Hell 

Seems the full stretch of our desire — 

To cheat, and hoard, and buy, and sell, 
And make high Heaven a liar. 

♦In the form here given this poem appeared in the Lawrence Republican, October 
15, 1857. It is also to be found, slightly changed, on page 125, in the volume by Funk & 
Wagnalls, by whose permission it is inserted here. 

(102) 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 103 

Aye! for the mockery of creeds 

Hath lain upon our life like rust, 
Till wailing Faith wears widow's weeds, 

And there is no more trust. 

No Faith — no Hope — no Charity — 

No melting Love that yearns to bless — 
Naught but the leering blasphemy 

Of foul-eyed Selfishness: 
No grand resolves for Sacrifice, 

From men whose aims are with the stars, 
Only lust, and shame, and vice, 

And Mammon's savage wars. 

Great God ! Is this our life ? Must all 

Our high thoughts that once burned within 
Be crushed in this vast carnival 

Of pomp and painted sin? 
Is this the Canaan we have won — 

Is this the food our souls must take? 
Lies no oasis farther on — 

O friends ! shall we not wake ? 



SONG.* 



She was a lady — my Louise; 

I was a Poet — poor and proud: 
She was cradled in queenly ease, — 

At my door Poverty called aloud. 

She could tread upon gorgeous floors; 

I lived in a mean, low thoroughfare: 
Handles of silver were on her doors, — 

Mine had no handles anywhere. 

She could do whatever she chose; 

(She was an heiress, did I not say?) 
I — from the hour whereat I rose, 

Worked half my life out every day. 

Many a scented lover came, 

Casting himself at her tiny feet, 

Mincing and mouthing her precious name, 
Calling her "lovely" — swearing her "sweet." 

Once or twice, when my blood was warm, 
I crept up, like a thief, to her side, 

Till my heart shot forth in a sudden storm 
Of passion, that set in a burst of pride. 

From the Lawrence Republican of October 29, 1837. 
(104) 



FREE-STATE LYRICS 105 

Out of the many who go and come 

Shuddering with pleasure, shook with sighs, 

I, the Poet, alone am dumb — 

But I have the lightning in my eyes. 



TO THADDEUS HYATT.* 



When God spake unto Moses, and the crags 
Of Sinai shook with thunder, do you think 
The gaping Jews upon the river-brink, 

Stripping the tinsel from their priestly rags 
To build their yellow idols, ever caught 
The slightest whisper of the Eternal Thought 

Amid the tumult of their mummeries, 

The slightest whisper of the Eternal Thought? 

So, do you think that those who fret and fume 
Tossed round and round in a great whirl of lies 
Can catch the meaning lying in your eyes, 

Or mark the colors of the mystic bloom 
Whose silent growth is as a rose of fire; 

Or through the rifts of dark and mist and gloom 
See Godlike love beneath your manly ire? 

♦Written in June, 1857, and given here by permission of Funk & Wagnalls. 



Thaddeus Hyatt was the President of the National Kansas Free- 
State Committee in 1856-57. He gave $10,000 at one time for our 
cause, and much more money and ability to our advancement. The 
present writer was his agent in bringing to Kansas 1,500 Springfield 
muskets, for example. Later, he contributed largely to our needs 
in times of drought. At the age of eighty-four he is still an active 
man, with undimmed intelligence and a heart and brain alive to 
all good work. Mr. Hyatt deserves the undying respect of all 
Kansas people. (106) 



HUNGER- 



: God ! what a pitiful mockery 

Seems this poor human speech, 
To paint the marvelous majesty 

Which my life designs to reach. 
God! how much less than very death 

Is this outspoken tongue, 
To grasp the glorious hymn of faith 

Which my soul and I have sung. 

O but for living lips of fire, 

To utter out my heart; 
And flash the tones from my spirit-lyre 

In the voice in which they start. 
O but for language that should scorch 

The innermost heart of Hell; 
And gleam and glare like a flaming torch 

Through deeps where the dark fiends dwell. 

O for an utterance that should sweep 

Like the red-hot-lipped simoon, 
And wither the damning things that keep 

This beautiful world in gloom. 

*In the date of publication this is the last direct contribution to the literature and 
history of Kansas made by Richard Realf. Its publication in the Lawrence Republican 
bears date October 22, 1857, which was about that of his leaving to join John Brown in 
Iowa. ( 107 ) 



108 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

O for a voice whose tones should fall 
Like the touch of a mother's prayer, 

On the sick and sorrowing souls of all 
Who pine for a holier air. 

O if my passionate scorn of Wrong, 

My fathomless love of Right, 
And the bountiful hopes that thrill and throng 

My soul as the stars of night — 
O if but these could pass my lips 

In the might with which they rise, 
How I 'd tear and trample the black eclipse 

That rests on our aching eyes. 

O Christ ! for a boundless pentecost 

To rest on my heaving soul; 
And give it speech of the Holy Ghost 

Instead of this stammering dole: 
Then, Jesu! the lofty hymn sublime 

I 'd fling on life's panting sea, 
Should ring on the farthest shore of Time 

And grapple Eternity! 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM. 



An Appendix, 

With a few stray poems of James Redpath, William A. 
Phillips, John Edwin Cook, Lydia S. Hall, Kichard J. 
Hinton, and Josie S. Hunt, names associated with the t 
" Pens that Made Kansas Free," and rescued from old 
files and memoranda of the fighting Free-State years. 

K. J. H. 



DOX'T GO BACK!- 



Respectfully and earnestly addressed to the Free-State 
citizens of Kansas, by their friend L. H. 

Don't go back ! my Yankee bojs ; 

What are you afraid of ? 
This is just the time to show 

The thorough stuff you 're made of. 
Though the sky looks ugly, South 

Though the clouds may gather — 
If the Northern vanes point right, 

*T won't affect the weather. 
Don't go back! for Freedom's sake; 

Kansas is worth saving. 
Don't go back ! if you are men 

And the name 's worth having. 

Don't go back! Though thunders growl — 

ISTever stop nor heed 'em; 
You can bear a passing scowl, 

For the sake of Freedom. 
Don't go back! Remind yourselves 

What it was you came for: 
And for honor bright, avoid 

All you might have shame for ! 

♦Boston, Dec. 1, 1856 ; from Herald of Freedom, Dec. 20, 1856. Writer unknown. 

(HI) 



112 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Don't go back! for Freedom's sake; 

Kansas is worth saving. 
Don't go back! if you are men 

And the name 's worth having. 

Don't go back ! for more will come, 

Proud to stand beside you 
In the ranks of Liberty, 

Where the times have tried you. 
Don't go back! The power of wrong 

Always must be fleeting — 
Every brave and honest heart 

In your cause is beating! 
Don't go back! for Freedom's sake; 

Kansas is worth saving. 
Don't go back! if you are men 

And the name 's worth having. 



WE'LL NOT GO BACK!* 



A REPLY. 



From the bleak New England hills, 

From the forest, dark and old, 
From the side of murm'ring rills, 

Came the hardy and the bold — 
Came they here to seek a home, 

On the prairies' boundless plain. 
Here, to Kansas, they have come, 

Found a home — and Avill remain. 

Rest they here; though clouds may lower 

Over Freedom's glowing sky, 
Fear not they the tyrant's power 

Nor the Ruffian's battle-cry: 
If the storm should o'er them roll — 

Battles' lightnings round them glow, 
Still, with firm undaunted soul, 

They will meet the coming blow; — 

Meet it, as the sons of sires, 

Who, in bygone days of yore, 
Stood where Bunker's awful fires 

Strewed the field with crimson gore ; 

*By John Edwin Cook; executed by Virginia for participation in the Harper's 
Ferry Raid, October, 1859. From Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, Dec. 20, 1856. 

—8 (113) 



114 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Sires who died that Freedom's light 
Here might glow with undimm'd raj, 

Freedom theirs; and truth and light 
Hallow tombs where they now lay. 

This our home; and Kansas sod 

Free from Slavery's stain shall be; 
Here the tyrant's chast'ning rod 

Bows no neck, nor bends a knee. 
This our home ; and we '11 never 

Leave a land we so much love, 
Till life's ties shall sever, 

And we seek a home above. 

Here, on Kansas' wide-spread plains, 

We shall dwell, through weal and woe; 
Keep it pure from Slavery's stains, 

Till life's fountains cease to flow. 
Leave it — never! nevermore, 

While the blue sky bends above; 
Woods and plains, and valleys o'er, 

Are our home — the home we love. 



TO MY WIFE. 



Cold and pallid is my life, 

Mary dear, 
Dull and lonely, bleak and dreary, 

Mary dear, 
When I 'm absent from my wife, 

Mary dear. 
With a spirit sad and weary, 

Mary dear, 
Oft with aching heart I sigh 
In extremest agony 
For my soul's divinity — 
Sigh, my lovely bride for thee, 

Mary dear. 
Dost thou hear ? Art thou near ? 
And dost thou try my soul to cheer — 
Give sigh for sigh and tear for tear, 
And dost thou hear that gloomy fear 
Which whispers : " In another sphere 
Thou shalt embrace that form of grace, 
But nevermore behold her face 

Till life and thee 

Part company — 
Until by cherubs thou art led 
To altars where the angels wed" ? 

James Redpatk. 

( Famous Correspondent. ) 
Lawrence, Kansas, August 27, 1857. 

(115) 



MORAL TALES FOR LITTLE SQUATTER SOV- 
EREIGNS. 

Dedicated to Carrie and Dudley. (His stepchildren.) 



'No. 1. — The Irish Thief 



An Irish thief one day 

Climbed over a garden wall, 
And then without delay 
Began to gather up all 
The flowers and the fruits that he could find, 
When suddenly he was seized behind: 
Bow-ow-ow, barked the dog, bow-ow-ow-ow. 
"Be jabers," said Paddy, "lie 's got me now." 

Bow-ow-ow, barked the dog, as much as to say — 
"What 's the state of yer health, friend Paddy, to-day ?" 

The thief ran off in haste, 
And soon was over the fence, 
"Oh, curse the nasty baste, 
I '11 stand on me defense. 
And then," said Pat, "if he comes along 
I '11 brain the brute wid a paving-stone." 
Bow-ow-ow, barked the dog, bow-ow-ow-ow. 
"Saint Patrick," said Paddy, "he 's on to me now. 

(116) 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 



117 



But I '11 kill him," quoth Pat, as a stone he spied, 
"Faith, it 's justifiable homicide." 

The dog displayed his teeth, 

Pat hastened to lift a stone — 
He cursed the imps beneath, 

For means of defense he 'd none. 
He wished himself in Donnybrook Fair 
"Wid lots of loose stones and Growler there." 
Bow-ow-ow, barked the dog, bow-ow-ow-ow. 
"Saint Bridget," yelled Paddy, "he bites me now." 
"Oh, curse these free countries," in anguish he cried — 
"Where the watch-dogs go loose and the stones are tied." 

MOEALS. 

In these three stanzas you will find 
Three morals of the sternest kind ; 
Which in their order I will state 
As illustrating Paddy's fate. 

I. In stealing fruit, bear this in mind: 
Be always sure— £0 look behind. 

II. Whoever seeks to punish those 

Whose duty prompts them to expose 
The evil deeds they have espied, 
Will find that sometimes stones are tied, 
And that between forbidden fruit and stealthy midnight 

prowler 
There 's mighty apt, in modern times, to be a faithful 
Growler. 



118 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

III. The last and greatest moral of the three 

Is — " Let jour neighbor's flowers and or- 
chards be; 
Or you, like fruit, may yet hang dangling from a 

(gallows) tree, 
Or else, like Pat — be bitten, 'neath your gallus, sav- 
agely." 

James Kedpath. 
Lawrence, Aug. 2, 1857. 



PUT 03T THY STREXGTH, ZIOX!"* 



Where Kedar's streamlet, leaps from rocky fountains, 

A gloomy ruin sits like sullen fate; 
A dreary wildness fills Judea's mountains, 

Once blessed by God — now cursed and desolate. 
But still another Zion He has left us, 

Mortals with immortality still meet; 
O God, in mercy, thou hast not bereft us, 

Thy Church, thy Zion, worships at thy feet. 

TTnfathomed mystery — sublime conception, 

Which lives by love — which loves by guiding faith ; 
Which gives earth's life an object, a direction, 

Which guides through life — still more, which guides 
through death; 
A brotherhood of spirits linked forever, 

The truth of God their sword — His love their shield ; 
"Put on thy strength, O Zion" — thou must sever 
The bands of Moloch on earth's weary field. 



♦The author, William A. Phillips, was the special correspondent of the New York 
Tribune, author of "The Conquest of Kansas," Colonel in the Union Army, and Repre- 
sentative in the U. S. Congress from Kansas for six years. This poem was published 
in the Lawrence Republican March 18, 1858. 

(119) 



120 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

"Go forth," He said— even He, the "well-beloved" ; 

He freely gave ; will you not give to others ? 
He gave to those who hated and despised Him, 

And asks your effort only for your brothers: 
He gave His people truth and moral power, 

Weapons omnipotent as Him who breathed them; 
Not the frail trappings of doubt's palsied hour, 

But for His ends who unto us bequeathed them. 

A cloud hangs o'er our earthly Zion now, 

The stain of falsehood, worldliness, and lust ; 
Awake, O Zion ! wipe thy tarnished brow, 

And in thy power hurl Dagon to the dust. 
A simple Christianity — ah me ! — 

The truthful meekness which a Saviour gave us — 
Where are their beauty ? Zion, oh, be free 

And strong in power of Him who died to save us. 

The Marah waters flood up to her gates, 

Soiling the sandals on the pilgrim's feet, 
While Hope, disconsolate, in tears awaits 

The barren future which her vision meets. 
Awake, O Zion ! from thy fatal sleep. 

Gird on the armor of thy Leader's might, 
And follow Him, and ceaseless watching keep ; 

"Put on thy strength," and wield it in the fight. 

William A. Phillips. 



RALLYING SONG FOE KANSAS EMIGRANTS. 



(Written on the - Lake Erie steamer "Plymouth Rock," en route 
to Kansas, June, 1856.) 

Come, brothers all, join in a song — 

Join with one voice and heart, 
That truth and right we may prolong, 

And bravely act our part, 
In that fair land to which we go, 

Crush'd now by tyrant hand, 
As backward we may drive the foe, 

In one dishonored band. 

Chorus — Raise our banner ! — Rally around — 
Ring out the battle-cry — 
Free Speech, Free Press, Free Men, Free 
Ground — 
Freedom and victory! 

Say, freemen, shall that virgin soil, 

So fertile and so fair, 
Forever be the despot's spoil, 

Or chains forever wear % 
Shall Freedom, pierc'd on sacred ground, 

Die in this land so wide ? 
Shall Liberty in chains be bound, 

And we in thralldom bide ? 

(121) [Chorus, ,] 



122 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

No! by the blood our fathers shed 

Methinks I hear you cry, 
~No ! by the memories of the dead, 

We will be free or die! 
Pledge we then our manhood's word 

Forever to defend 
The right of freemen to be heard, 

Where'er our footsteps wend. 

[Chorus.] 

Come then, let us maintain the Truth 

In all the world's despite, 
With life's best blood and fire of youth, 

'Midst Slavery's darkest night; 
Think of the strife our fathers fought 

On Bunker blazing high; 
Of noble men who wonders wrought, 

That Freedom might not die. 

Richard J. Hinton. 

From Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, December 20, 1856. 



THE BORDER-RUFFIAN FLAG. 



Trail in the dust the bloody flag — 

On the ground let it lie; 
Never again that flaunting rag 

Above our homes shall fly. 
Dishonored let the " Lone Star " trail — 

Trampled beneath our feet, 
Nor shall its foul supporters fail 

Their just reward to meet. 

It waved abroad in scornful pride 

When fair the spring sung clear, 
It 's fitting that its triumph died 

Ere summer's leaf was sere; 
And thus shall fall the coward-knaves — 

Each traitor — robber foe, 
Who would pollute our soil with slaves, 

And crush our freedom low. 

Cheerily let the glad shouts peal 

A welcome to our Press; 
Huzza ! we '11 make the ruffians feel 

The strength within its breast! 



(123 



124 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Huzza! Huzza! for Type and Pen, • 

Best soldiers in this fight; 
God bless the Press ! God bless the Men ! 

That dare maintain the Right. 

ElCHARD J. HlNTON. 
From Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, November 1, 1856. 



The Kansas State Historical Society has among its relics the 
flag which is referred to in the foregoing lines. It was carried into 
Lawrence on the 21st of May, 1856, by a South Carolina company, 
and placed above the newspaper offices they destroyed. In the fol- 
lowing August it was captured by the Free-State men from some 
of Buford's command, and brought to Lawrence. The day that the 
new type and press of the revived Herald of Freedom were brought 
into the Free-State town, the captured rag was brought out and 
trailed in the dust at the rear of the wagon that carried the type. 



THE PEAIEIE LAND. 



Oh, I have looked from craggy peaks 

Out o'er the world's wide expanse; 
I have stood where the hurricane speaks 

And winds in their fury dance ; 
Where summer suns gild eternal snow 

And winter its ice-wreath winds ; 
Where naught but the mountain pine may grow, 

And the broom a chaplet twines. 

I have stood where ocean's fiercest rage 

In roaring tempest grandly spoke; 
Where wild elements savage war wage 

And rude Nature loose had broke ; 
I 've seen its surface so calm and soft 

Mirror back the tropic's sun, 
And o'er all its blazonry aloft 

Made the waves laugh as they run. 

There, where England's vales were verdant-spread 

With a wealth of lawn and lea; 
Where Scotia's mountain burns o'er rocky bed 

Elowed onward to the sea; 



(125) 



126 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Where sunny plains of France were blending 
With purple fruit ripe blushing; — 

New England's autumn hues were blending 
And Northern lakes are rushing. 

I have seen them all: but give to me 

Our glorious Western land, — 
Its rolling, wide and verdant prairie 

That reaches far on every hand — 
Its ravines, bluffs, and timbered creeks — 

Its skies and seasons fair; 
The land where God in His glory speaks, 

And fills with a beauty rare. 

Richard J. Hinton. 

From Herald of Freedom, Lawrence, January 10, 1857. 



MY MOTHEK'S SONG. 



(Written on the march through Iowa to Kansas, in July, 1856.) 

I heard last night my mother's song 

Sung in a laughing crowd, 
And in my heart it echoed long 

Mid mirth both rude and loud; 
The cabin walls soon faded out — 

The scene around grew dim — 
And into whispers passed the shout 

As memory sung its hymn. 

Again I was a happy child 

Beside my mother's knee, 
As soft she sung in accents mild 

That low sweet melody; 
My arms around her neck I lay — 

That neck of modest grace, 
And kissed the lips that kissed away 

The tears upon my face. 

O, many days have passed since then, 
And childhood's hours have flown, 

While out among the strifes of men 
My life has older grown; 

(127) 



128 TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

Yet still within my heart there blooms 

A blossom from that time, 
Which scatters glory o'er the glooms 

That gather round my prime. 

So, softer still those pure notes fall 

Like music from the spheres, 
And far-off voices fondly call 

From dim and distant years; 
Yet, Mother dear, I '11 not forget 

That love which o'er me flung 
The holiest hopes that ever yet 

Round mortal being hung. 

Richard J. Hixton. 

From Lawrence Republican, Nov. 5, 1857. 



PEACE. 



BY MISS LTDIA S. HALL. 



Peace, the angel calm and quiet, 

Brow of purest light serene, 
In her snowy drapery cometh, 

In her dignity of mien, 
And the stars look down and bless her, 
Rivaling their brilliant sheen. 

Lo! the rainbow bends above her, 

Smile the pearly dewdrops sweeter, 
And the fairy radiant frost-work 

At the sunrise loves to meet her, 
And the heaven-sent crystal snow-wreath 
Offers up its wealth to greet her. 

Little children bless the angel, 

Though they know not, care not, why; 

Matrons in their heart-wealth speak from 
Glowing cheek and dewy eye; 

Heroes fresh with glory laurels, 
Prize her more than victory. 



(129) 



130 TWENTIETH CENTUKY CLASSICS 

High-born champions of the Right, 
Doing, daring, nobly battling — 

Tyranny provoked the fight — 

They have conquered, spurning ever, 

Edicts from the Right of Might. 

Turmoil makes the quiet deeper; 

Midnight magnifies the day; 
Joy were but a boon unvalued 

If no sorrow marked life's way; 
Peace, ah, none but the invaded 
Know how precious is her sway. 

Heartfelt thanks to Him who made her 

Guardian where her footsteps come; 
Benedictions on the hand that 

Beckoned her a welcome home. 
Blessings on each one who bringeth 
"White blocks" for her beauteous "dome." 

Ah, what lavish treasures follow, 

Follow ever in her train. 
Peace exiled, the blushing harvest 

Heeds not sunshine, dew, nor rain. 
Who shall gather purple clusters ? 
Who shall garner golden grain ? 

Lo ! she cometh, white-robed angel ! 

Nay, the exile dwelleth here; 
And we give her grateful welcome — 
She hath brought us goodly cheer. 
We will keep her, cherish, love her — 
Peace, the Angel, dwelleth heke. 



FLOTSAM AND JETSAM 131 

In her exile dark the shadows 

That across our pathway lay, 
But our spirits caught the starbeam — 

Inspiration in its ray;. 
Stronger grew the brave and gallant — 

Ah, we knew ? t was almost day ! 

Patiently we watched and waited, 
Earnestly we toiled and prayed, 
Waxing with the moments stronger, 

Eot a fear our hopes betrayed. 
Well we knew that hovering o'er us, 
Sheltering pinions were our aid; 
Now we see their white plumes folded, 
ISTow we know her wanderings stayed. 
Blessed be our brave defenders, 

Through the shadows of that night ; 
Blessed He whose voice recalled her 

From her vigils and her flight; 
Blest the guardian angel with us, 
Bringing peace and heavenly light ! 

Lawrence, December 25, 1856. 



Miss Hall was one of the noble women, few in number under the 
needs of the situation, who bore unmurmuringly the hardest part 
of the pioneer life. She will be reealled by all familiar with Law- 
rence in 1855-57, as one of the two hostesses of the "Cincinnati 
House." Some who read this will remember having been welcomed 
to that pleasant board, but few will now recall that she was once a 
brilliant contributor to the once famous Loicell Offering, a literary 
periodical maintained entirely by New England factory operatives. 



A TRUE POET, THIS. 

Josephine Slocum Hunt, one of whose fine lyrics is here given, 
was closely related to early Kansas history, — first by friendship 
with some who bore an active part therein, and later by the resi- 
dence here of sisters and other relatives. A close search has been 
fruitless in finding a copy of one fine historical poem, written anent 
the Hamilton Marais des Cygnes Massacre, of which tragic event 
John G. Whittier also wrote the well-known " The Swan's Marsh." 
Miss Hunt was a New Hampshire girl, a close friend of Miss Annie 
U. Foss, now Mrs. Burbank, who will be recalled by those fortunate 
enough to possess the volume of the Kansas Magazine, as one of its 
most notable writers. Mrs. Burbank resided in Kansas for several 
years. 

The poem given from Miss Hunt's pen is a charming example of 
the singer's genius. Mr. Whittier is reported to have once said of 
this lady, then a young woman of twenty, that she "had already 
mastered that elusive secret of English rhythm which he had spent 
a lifetime in seeking to acquire." 



BABY BUNK 



BY JOSIE S. HUNT. 



Winsome little Baby Bunn! 
Brighter than the stars that rise 
In the dusky evening skies, 
Browner than the robin's wing, 
Clearer than a woodland spring, 
Are the eyes of Baby Bunn — 
Winsome Baby Bunn! 
(132) 



FLOTSAM AIs T D JETSAM 

Smile, mother, smile ! 
Thinking softly all the while, 

Of a tender, blissful day, 
When the dark eves so like these 
Of the cherub on your knees 

Stole your girlish heart away. 
Oh ! the eyes of Baby Bunn ! 

Rarest mischief they will do, 
When once old enough to steal 

What their father stole from you. 
Smile, mother, smile! 

Winsome little Baby Bunn ! 
Milkwhite lilies half unrolled, 
Set in calvces of ffold, 
Cannot match this forehead fair 
With its rings of yellow hair ! 
Scarlet berry cleft in twain 
By a wedge of pearly grain, 
Is the mouth of Baby Bunn — 
Winsome Baby Bunn ! 

Weep, mother, weep ! 
For the little one asleep 

With his head against your breast, 
Xever in the coming years, 
Though he seek for it with tears, 

Will he find so sweet a rest. 
Oh, the brow of Baby Bunn ! 
Oh, the scarlet mouth of Bunn! 



133 



134 



TWENTIETH CENTURY CLASSICS 

One must wear its crown of thorns, 
Drink its cup of gall, must one! 
Though the trembling lips shall shrink, 
White with anguish as they drink, 
And the temples sweat with pain 
Drops of blood, like purple rain: 
Weep, mother, weep ! 

Winsome little Baby Bunn ! 
Not the sea-shell's palest tinge, 
Not the daisy's rose-white fringe, 
Not the softest, faintest glow, 
Of the sunset on the snow, 
Is more beautiful and sweet 
Than the wee pink hands and feet 
Of the little Baby Bunn— 

Winsome Baby Bunn ! 

Pray, mother, pray ! 
Feet like these will lose the way, 

Wandering blindly from the right; 
Pray, and sometimes will your prayers 
Be to him like golden stairs, 
Built through darkness kito light. 
Oh, the dimpled feet of Bunn ! 

In their silken stockings dressed ! 
Oh, the dainty hands of Bunn ! 

Hid like rose-leaves in your breast! 
These will grasp at jewels rare, 
But to find them empty air; — 



FLOTSAM AWD JETSAM 135 

Those shall falter many a day 
Bruised and bleeding by the way. 
Ere they reach the land of Rest ! 
Pray, mother, pray ! 

From Freedom's Champion, March 19. 1859. 



THE JOHN BROWN PAPERS. 



A Historical Collection of Original Documents and 
Letters, Public, Private, and Family; with Letters 
of the Men Connected with Osawatomie and Har- 
per's Ferry. 



The Editors of this Great Work are Colonel RICHARD J. HINTON, 

of Brooklyn, New York, and WILLIAM ELSEY 

CONNELLEY, of Topeka. 



Colonel Hinton is one of the few surviving pioneers of Kansas. He gave 
the best years of his life to her cause. He has written much on Kansas 
History. He knew personally all the great characters who fought and 
labored for Kansas freedom. He was one of the trusted friends of John 
Brown. Every man who went to Harper's Ferry was his friend and compan- 
ion. For him a man was tried and executed by the State of Virginia. Colo- 
nel Hinton' s John Brown and His Men is one of the great historical works 
of the time. He has written a great many other able and valuable works. 
Mr. Connelley has written much and well on Kansas history, having just 
completed a Life of John Brown. His works are recognized as authority. 
He is a student, — one not afraid of work. He investigates. He digs 
down to the origin of things in every department of his subject. He be- 
lieves that much of genius lies in hard work. 

John Brown will live in history as the greatest of American reformers. 
The heroic age of any people is that in which its pioneers grapple with 
and subdue the wild forces of nature, — when savage men and primeval 
forests are made to bow to progress and civilization. In this conflict 
men try as in a balance their institutions. In this fierce retort is their sys- 
tem of government purified. What is fundamentally wrong is here cor- 
rected and eliminated. The true course of national life is discovered and 
defined. The truly great men of our country, Benton, Brown, Clay, Har- 
rison, Jefferson, Jackson, Washington, and Franklin, learned the ways of 
men and the spirit of liberty on the frontiers of the nation. 

In the heroic age of our country John Brown grew up in the wilderness 
of the Ohio Valley. The spirit of the Puritan Pilgrim was here quickened 
in him. He became the disciple of Jefferson, and lived to make a reality 

(137) 



OCT 22 1900 



what Jefferson left a theory. Here he developed the spirit of liberty which 
made him the hero of the people and a martyr for humanity. He changed 
our history and the course of our national life. No man is well informed 
in the history of America who has not carefully and deeply studied the life 
and times of John Brown. This fact makes his writings invaluable. The 
published biographies contain some of his letters and documents, but they 
are edited, corrected and changed. Students now demand to see exact 
facsimiles of documents ; they desire to decide for themselves their meaning. 
To supply this want is one of the purposes of the John Brown Papers. 
But it is to do much more than that. It will be a great work, worthy of the 
man and'of the nation's cause. The letters will be grouped in a way to exhibit 
the forces generated on the frontiers of the Anglo-Saxon civilization in the 
forests of America. They will reveal phases of American life now past 
forever, but the effects of which will remain our most potent forces as long 
as we are a people. To these forces did John Brown owe much of the inspi- 
ration of his life. Every American should be familiar with them. He can- 
not rightly understand the institutions of our country without a thorough 
knowledge of their origin, operation, and effect. This the work is designed 
to facilitate. 

We solicit subscriptions to this great work. It will be a folio volume, 
embracing the Historical Papers of John Brown and his men, printed on 
fine paper, from new type, with wide margins, fine illustrations and auto- 
graph facsimiles, including an engraving of John Brown from the most cor- 
rect portrait in existence. It will be handsomely bound, and will contain 
about 550 pages. 

We have placed it at the extremely low price of $2.50. 

Fill out the following subscription blank and forward it to us : 



CRANE & COMPANY, 

Topeka, Kansas. 

Gentlemen :— I hereby subscribe for THE JOHN BROWN PAPERS, 
edited by Colonel Richard J. Hinton and William E. Connelley; price, 
$2.50, prepaid. 

If more than one 

copy is desired, Name, 

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